Which brings me to my solution, to the way Gehrig can save us from another decade of agonizing Hall of Fame votes. Let Jeff Idelson, the organization’s president, use the occasion of Gehrig’s enshrinement to announce The Baseball Hall of Fame Fund for Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Let Major League Baseball and its players make voluntary, generous contributions. Let baseball’s steroid users, past and present, acknowledge that they cheated by adding muscle that wasn’t rightfully theirs and let them begin to repent by supporting research to find a cure for the disease that stripped muscle from Gehrig.
Every day in the United States, 15 people are diagnosed with ALS. Scientists don’t know what causes it or how to cure it. Let baseball’s steroid cheats embrace a search for the cure. Let them join the boards of their local ALS charities and give some of the great wealth their artificial muscles helped them earn. Let the Hall of Fame lead the way.
If they were to take up such a mission, they might begin to atone for their mistakes, and the voters who elect players to the Hall of Fame might begin to think about them more favorably. As a fan, I know I would.
There’s my pitch. Step up to the plate, sluggers.
Repoz
Posted: January 11, 2013 at 11:30 PM |
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1. depletion Posted: January 12, 2013 at 01:36 AM (#4345454)but by all means, let's commit copious sums of money to a disease that affects very few people in the name of a person who didn't even have it.
brilliant.
However, I can't find any stats out there - are we talking Eric Heiden thighs, or what? Anybody know?
EDIT: I got curious when I recently saw those pictures of Gehrig in the Tarzan outfit again - his legs didn't look that big to me, but then I come from Swedish mountain people.
While all the diseases you listed worthy causes, they're also potentially lucrative ones, and have many billions of dollars in private research thrown at them every year. If you're going to make a charitable donation to medical research, it does make some sense to channel your money towards a disease that isn't likely to garner much interest from big pharma.
but why should the HOF create an entity to badger them into it and then rub it in those players' faces by asking them to work for the organization? wouldn't the players feel insulted? why can't the players just do that themselves if the only goal is to change perceptions?
Just as an aside, my mum died of this stupid disease. She had a long term version of this which took about 6 years to go from some sort of minor problem with her fingers until the final end, where her heart and lungs stopped (which is the typical final cause). It was all very puzzling (at least to me, my folks knew more), because at first it was just a problem with her hand, then her arm, then both arms. The disease works its way backwards from the extremities until it hits the spinal column. Back in the 70s only about 4,000 people in the US had it, but probably because it wasnt diagnosed too well. Jacob Javits, a senator from NY had it and at least three memembers of the old Los Angeles Rams of the 1950s. It's very odd the way it hits randomly.
My dad took her all over the place including the Mayo clinic and some snake venom (literally) people in the south. It took a couple of years before they figured it out what she had, but my parents knew for several years that she had it.
I spent a little time studying it, and some people think it might have to do with prions, which are as far as I can understand short bits of proteins that inject themselves into the cells to reproduce. However I think only a couple of diseases actually work, or might work this way (I think Curu and Jakob Kruetzfelder disease).
I dont really worry about getting it, although possibly my later generations could. A clear genetic connection has not been found to my knowledge, although I think in the case of the fast acting version, there might be.
I was unclear about the comment above suggesting that Lou Gehrig did not die of this disease. Is there some story that I missed? Bear in mind there are at least a couple versions of this disease one that kills in 1-2 years and another that takes many years.
That's why they called him Sir Hits-A-Lot. His anaconda don't want none unless you got runs, hon.
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