Bad Things Happen to Winners, Too

Bad Things Happen to Winners, Too

"Of course, very successful people have setbacks, too. It is not all a

rosy road for them. Highly successful people find ways to get back up

from the mat of defeat and claw their way back to the top of the ladder.

It’s as if they know in their hearts that they will be back on top again.

Let’s look at some baseball superstars. Cy Young won 511 games

as a pitcher. Most career hits ever: Pete Rose, 4,256. Most career stolen

bases: Rickey Henderson, 1,406. Highest batting average: Ty Cobb,

366, which means out of every thousand at-bats, Ty Cobb got 366 hits

and did it throughout his entire career. If anyone today can hit just three

hundred out of every one thousand at-bats over his Major League career,

he is guaranteed a spot in the immortal Hall of Fame in Cooperstown,

New York.

One such great success, who met an untimely career end and,

ultimately, death, was the great baseball hero Lou Gehrig. Lou came

onto the scene in the Major Leagues in 1923 at the age of twenty. He

spent the next sixteen years as a New York Yankee. Gehrig was given

the nickname “The Iron Horse” because he would go on to play 2,130

consecutive games without sitting any of them out. This was some feat,

especially in the days when a pitcher would pitch all nine innings, rest

two or three days, and do it all over again. Players were tough back

then—no babying any of them. He played a total of 2,164 Major

League games.

Gehrig had seventeen seasons with the Yankees and would have kept

going another five years or so. But something unheard of then happened

to him. He became suddenly sick with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis

(ALS), what is now known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease.” No disease was

supposed to attack “The Iron Horse,” not at the strong and powerful

age of thirty-six. But, yes, this amazing player suddenly couldn’t play

very well, and he couldn’t understand why his hitting and fielding was

sub-par.

This “iron horse” of a man, who had played 2,130 consecutive games,

finally took himself out of the lineup. He broke his own consecutive

streak, not realizing that he had a debilitating and ultimately crippling

disease that would take his life approximately two years after his last

game. Yet, in a farewell speech to his adoring fans at Yankee Stadium, he

proclaimed himself the “luckiest man alive.”

The luckiest man alive? Gehrig had an irreversible death sentence.

But here is part of his speech:"

“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 the earth. I have

been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but

kindness and encouragement from you fans.

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve

got an awful lot to live for. Thank you”

Count Your Blessings!!

 C-John Paul Carinci (from the book An All-Consuming Desire To Succeed)