Daily Dialogue — June 26, 2014

“I have been walking on ball fields for sixteen years. And I have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans. I have had the great honor to have played with these great veteran ballplayers on my left — Murderers Row, our championship team of 1927. I have had the further honor living and playing with these men on my right — the Bronx Bombers, the Yankees of today.

I have been given fame and undeserved praise by the boys up there behind the wire, my friends, the sports writers. I have worked under the two greatest managers of all time, Miller Huggins and Joe McCarthy.

I have a mother and father who fought to give me health and a solid background in my youth. I have a wife, a companion for life, who has shown me more courage than I ever knew.

People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today . . . today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

— The Pride of the Yankees (1942), screenplay by Jo Swerling and Herman J. Mankiewicz, original story by Paul Gallico, prologue by Damon Runyon

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Sports Speech, suggested by Kalen.

Trivia: Samuel Goldwyn was initially reluctant about making the film as he believed that baseball movies were box office poison. He was persuaded to do it when he viewed footage of Gehrig’s famous farewell speech.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The speech in the movie is edited from the original delivered by Gehrig on July 4, 1939. Here is that address in its entirety:

“Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and 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?

Sure I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball’s greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy?

Sure I’m lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift — that’s something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies — that’s something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter — that’s something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body — it’s a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed — that’s the finest I know.

So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

Note how the most famous line in the speech — “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth” — is up front in Gehrig’s actual address, but the last line in the movie version. My guess is the screenwriters recognized it was the most powerful line in the speech and gave the scene a strong, emotional ending, hence the edit.

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