Gehrig’s dignity a world away from Kidd’s big gamble

On Friday, when the fireworks pop and the hotdogs sizzle for the annual celebration of Independence Day in the United States, New York Yankees fans will have another impossibly sentimental reason to hark back on past Fourth of Julys.

It will be 75 years to the day since Lou Gehrig gave one of the most memorable sporting speeches of all time as he retired suddenly from baseball to prepare for his relatively fast slide towards death — less than two years of suffering after almost two decades of glory in the Bronx.

Like something out of a Hollywood movie, Gehrig’s voice shimmered around Yankee Stadium as he told the gathered fans that even though it was true what they had read, he still considered himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth”.