**Note: With the All-Star game taking place this week at Yankee Stadium, I will spend the next several days showcasing cards from my Yankee collection.

Is there a more sympathetic scene in baseball history than that of Lou Gehrig standing in Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, giving his farewell speech? “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” The speech is nearly seven decades old now, and yet the aforementioned phrase remains one of most memorable ones in the history of the game, and likely the most famous words ever spoken at Yankee Stadium. After being stricken with ALS, Gehrig was forced from the game in early 1939 at age 36. Dubbed the Iron Horse because of his durability, Gehrig played 2,130 games straight and collected more than 2,700 hits in his 17 seasons in The Bigs. He wound up with a career batting average of .340, slugged 493 homers and drove in 1,995 runs. Oddly enough the number of RBIs Gehrig collected is identical to the year (1995) in which Cal Ripken Jr. would break Gehrig’s consecutive game streak. The 2007 UD Masterpieces Gehrig card pictured here is no where close to being Gehrig’s most valuable (this one is only $6), let alone the most valuable one in my collection. But during a week in which we as baseball fans honor Yankee Stadium and it’s legacy, there is no other Gehrig card — neither autograph, nor game-used — that better encompasses the memory of Gehrig at The Stadium.

This entry was posted on July 18, 2008 at 1:20 am and is filed under Card of the Day with tags 500 home run club, ALS, autograph, baseball, baseball card, Cal Ripken Jr., collection, consecutive games streak, Farewell Speech, game-used, hobby, Lou Gehrig, Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth, New York Yankees, sports, UD Mastrpieces, Upper Deck, Yankee Stadium, Yankees. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.