On This Day In History 7/4

Three AWOL Worldcon members were in Yankee Stadium when this picture was taken.

Three AWOL Worldcon members were in Yankee Stadium when this picture was taken.

July 4, 1939: Julius Schwartz ditched the last day of the first World Science Fiction Convention and went with Mort Weisinger and Otto Binder to see a ballgame at Yankee Stadium.

He still got to see fan history being made. Baseball fan history.

A very special thing happened that afternoon: Lou Gehrig announced his retirement from the game of baseball. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It’s something I will never forget.

Gehrig’s famous lines echoed throughout the park:

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.

(And if you’re any kind of baseball fan you should not miss the video of all 30 Major League first basemen doing Gehrig’s lines, something Fox Sports produced to mark the 75th anniversary of his speech.)