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"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 have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans."
-- Lou Gehrig, July 4, 1939


Those words were uttered by Lou Gehrig in a ceremony between games of a doubleheader at Yankee Stadium nearly 70 years ago as he was dying from ALS -- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- a disease that was unknown at the time, but would ultimately bear his name.

In honor of Gehrig's memory, Major League Baseball has teamed with four major non-profit organizations to find a cure for the illness that destroys the nerve cells controlling muscles, causes complete paralysis and ultimately leads to death an average of 3-5 years after diagnosis.

The campaign, called "4♦ALS Awareness," will culminate with Gehrig's words being read at all Major League ballparks where games are played this coming July 4, during the seventh-inning stretch.

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