TupaTalk: What Lou Gehrig's story teaches us about dealing with life's curveballs

It was, perhaps, the most dramatic dugout moment in baseball history.

Gentle giant Lou Gehrig planted himself on the Yankee bench, upper body slumped forward, eyes looking down. He had just told manager Joe McCarthy to scratch him out of the lineup for that day’s game, ending a streak of 2,130 consecutive games played lasting from 1925-39.

After just eight games into the 1939 season, Gehrig was batting just .143 (4-for-28) with no homers and one RBI. Unknown at the time, Gehrig was afflicted with a terminal, paralyzing disease that would kill him two years later.

He had taken his warmups at first base the morning of May 2, 1939, but decided he just couldn’t play anymore. So, without warning, he voluntarily told McCarthy to replace him.

Writer Art Hill later described in his book “I Don’t Care If I Never Come Back,” this heart-wrenching moment in baseball history when the public announcer read the Yankee lineup for that game. “…the words, ‘Dahlgren, first base,’ stunned the crowd into a moment of unplanned silence, which was followed by the unprecedented sound of several thousand people sighing in unison,” Hill wrote in his book. “Then Gehrig (who was the team captain) trudged painfully up to the plate, carrying the lineup card without his name on it. It was one of the most moving moments in sports history, high drama of the sort you cannot make up.”

After Gehrig returned to the Yankee dugout and collapsed himself on the bench, his teammates were silent, not knowing quite what to say. Their silent tears bespoke the pain welling up in their hearts for their ailing first baseman. It was for a moment, such as this, that a kind Providence had put one Vernon “Lefty” Gomez on Earth.

With the tension as tight as an elephant’s girdle, Gomez, one of the Yankees’ starting pitchers, slid over to Gehrig, put his hand on his shoulder and stated: “It took ‘em 15 years to get you out of the lineup. They get me out of there in 15 minutes.”

Gomez’ timely and sensitive wisecrack had shattered the strain of the moment and brought relief as a shelter to repel the storm of sadness.

I find it interesting on how a person of character perceives their challenges. Gehrig chose to look beyond the negative, the unfairness of illness and the reduction in his physical abilities and focus on the blessings of his life.

In his legendary farewell speech at Yankee Stadium — which fortunately lives in his own voice on a radio recording — Gehrig expressed appreciation for his Yankee teammates, for his manager, for his parents, for the fans, for his opportunities and for his wife.

To him, death and disease were not destroyers of that which was good in his life — they were only incidental figures that would write the final chapter of a life lived well and honorably.

There’s an incident from his life that hasn’t received much attention during the years. After Lou quit baseball, the New York City mayor hired him as a parole officer, specifically to work with troubled teens. Among his duties was to decide legal punishment for them.

One of the young men that came into his purview was Rocky Barbella, a hateful, authority-defying juvenile criminal. After a hearing, Gehrig decided he should be committed to jail and turned down his parole. Barbella swore and screamed at him as he was pulled out of the room.

Not too many years later, Barbella changed his life and his name. He became known as Rocky Graziano and won the middleweight boxing champion of the world. He later credited Gehrig’s hard decision as a catalyst to him transforming his hate into positive energy for a life that would be worthwhile.

I’ve also read how on a Christmas Eve, perhaps the last one of Gehrig’s life, some of the boys he had worked with came to the house to visit with him.

He’s been gone 81 years now. He was an incredible player in terms of stats and leadership — but, more importantly, he was one of the finest human beings ever to play major league baseball.

This article originally appeared on Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise: Tupa: Gehrig's story teaches us how to deal with life's curveballs