"Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about a bad break I got. Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. I have been in ballparks for 17 years, and I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day?"
Lou Gehrig
July 4, 1939
Seventy–five years ago today, Lou Gehrig delivered what may be the most famous farewell address in history.
For sure, it's the most famous farewell address in sports history.
Diagnosed less than a month earlier with the incurable disease that took his life and now informally bears his name, Gehrig was the subject of a July 4 tribute at Yankee Stadium. New York played a doubleheader with the Washington Senators that day, losing the first game and winning the second.
Between games, Gehrig was honored with "perhaps as colorful and dramatic a pageant as ever was enacted on a baseball field," reported the New York Times. He was reunited with the legendary '27 Yankees, also known as "Murderer's Row," including Babe Ruth.
It was an emotional occasion for everyone.
Yankees manager Joe McCarthy said Gehrig was "the finest example of a ballplayer, sportsman and citizen that baseball has ever known." Openly emotional, McCarthy turned to Gehrig and said, "Lou, what else can I say except that it was a sad day in the life of everybody who knew you when you came into my hotel room that day in Detroit and told me you were quitting as a ballplayer because you felt yourself a hindrance to the team. My God, man, you were never that."
And, in return, Gehrig gave baseball a moment to savor. Appropriately, the Yankees' publicist recently told USA Today it is "baseball's Gettysburg Address."
"I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth," he said, and he meant it. He knew he had been given a "bad break," but he practically bubbled over with gratitude for his career and the people in his life.
"I've got an awful lot to live for," he said. And he meant that, too.
"Joe Louis is the hardest puncher that I've ever seen. ... He's a good man. Anyone who plans on beating him had better know what they're doing."
Max Schmeling
Sometimes a sport needs a shot in the arm from an individual or a team to restore its lost luster.
So it was with heavyweight boxing in the 1930s. The legendary Jack Dempsey had been its champion through the mid–1920s, but he had been succeeded by a string of relatively nondescript fighters, one of whom was Max Schmeling, a German fighter.
(Schmeling was the first to win the heavyweight title by disqualification — his opponent floored him with a low blow. He resented the fact that this was what he was remembered for in the record books.)
But Schmeling played an important role in the development of one of boxing's most beloved figures, Joe Louis.
Schmeling didn't hold the title long. In fact, he lost it a couple of years after he won it — to the same fighter whose disqualification gave it to him in the first place. After that, his career followed a downward trajectory, but he was still considered a contender (albeit one who was past his prime) when he fought Louis for the first time in 1936.
In the tensions of the pre–World War II world, Schmeling and Louis were (unfairly) treated as symbols of their countries. And Nazi Germany celebrated when Schmeling knocked out Louis, then the #1 contender, in June 1936. The victory was heralded in Germany as proof of the validity of the Nazi belief in Aryan superiority.
The result undoubtedly shocked many casual boxing fans, but, from what I have read, the fight was much like the plot of the original "Rocky" movie. Schmeling, like Rocky, trained intently for the fight while Louis, assuming he would win, spent more time on the golf course than he did in the gym.
After the 1936 bout, Schmeling apparently felt entitled to a shot at the championship, having defeated the top contender, but global politics interfered. Fight organizers were reluctant to give a German fighter a shot at the title (and the propaganda opportunities that would come with it).
Germany kept on cheering as Schmeling won his next three fights, but then, 75 years ago today, Schmeling met Louis in a rematch in New York's Yankee Stadium. The Ring magazine would call it the "Fight of the Decade."
Since they had met the first time, Louis had won 11 straight fights, including an eighth–round knockout of then–champion James Braddock to claim the title a year after his loss to Schmeling. But even though Louis had won the title in the ring, he said he would not consider himself the champion until he avenged that loss.
It was a boxing match, but it was more than that, as Nigel Collins wrote for ESPN. That second Louis–Schmeling fight "just might have been boxing's finest hour," he wrote.
It was also a symbolic battle between democracy and fascism, just like the first bout had been. "It was," wrote Collins, "the fight's cultural, racial and political ramifications that set it apart and led historian Bert Sugar to label it 'The greatest sporting event of the 20th century.' "
It wasn't just a fight in black America. Like it or not, as Avis Thomas–Lester wrote in the New Pittsburgh Courier, Louis carried black pride into the ring with him, but it really went beyond that. It was, wrote Thomas–Lester, a "a grudge match — Black against White, African American versus Aryan, the so–called 'Land of the Free' battling Nazi Germany."
Louis was the unofficial representative of the black community in America. There had been a black champion before — Jack Johnson — but his reign had been tainted in the public's perception, and Louis was the new hero of the black community.
It wasn't symbolic for Louis. It was the rematch with Schmeling, the only man to defeat him in three dozen professional fights, for which he had been waiting. It was his chance to redeem himself, and he did so with a vengeance.
The fight was scheduled for 15 rounds, but Louis, who took nothing for granted this time, kept his focus, and he knocked out Schmeling before the first round was over. Symbolically, it was an important moment in the histories of both nations. I know from the accounts I have read that there was a lot of rejoicing in Harlem when Louis beat Schmeling — and probably in black neighborhoods all across the country. My guess is that, in the domino–like way of history, Louis' triumph paved the way for public acceptance and support of black athletes like Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and so many others.
Louis didn't lose again until Ezzard Charles defeated him in a unanimous decision in that same Yankee Stadium in 1950. His tenure as heavyweight champion was longer than anyone else's.
It might have been that way, anyway — but, for Louis, it all really began on this night 75 years ago.
A "tomato can" is a fighter who is believed to be past his prime and an "easy" or "guaranteed" win for an up-and-coming fighter who wants to pad his record.
Sometimes, though, the "tomato can" doesn't cooperate. For example, in 1990, undefeated heavyweight champion Mike Tyson lost the title to a 42-to-1 underdog named Buster Douglas.
Another heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, almost lost his title to lightly regarded Chuck Wepner in 1975. Wepner nearly went the distance against Ali and inspired the original "Rocky" movie.
I got my bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Arkansas, and I got my master's degree in journalism from the University of North Texas. Most of my adult life has been dedicated to writing and editing in one form or another. Most recently I have taught writing (news and developmental) as an adjunct journalism professor at Richland College, where I advise the student newspaper staff. Go, Thunderducks!
