The Pride of the Yankees

Considered one of the greatest baseball films ever made. This is the moving, true story of New York Yankee immortal Lou Gehrig, the southpaw slugger who rose to the very top of the sport, only to be cut down at the peak of his career by an incurable illness that still bears his name (ALS or "Lou Gehrig's Disease"). The son of hardworking immigrants, Gehrig (played by Gary Cooper) becomes a star athlete, and, with the help of sports journalist Sam Blake (Walter Brennan), is signed by the New York Yankees and joins their big-league lineup in 1925; real-life Yanks Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel and Mark Koenig play themselves. He also meets and falls in love with Eleanor Twitchell (Teresa Wright) and earns the nickname "The Iron Man of Baseball" because he never misses a game, going on to play in 2,130 consecutive games (a record that stood for more than 50 years until finally being broken by Cal Ripken, Jr. in 1995). In 1939, Gehrig discovers that he has a fatal neurological disease called amytrophic lateral sclerosis. On July 4, 1939, an emotional Lou Gehrig, a scant two years away from death, bids farewell to 62,000 of his fans and friends at Yankee Stadium. Allowing that he might have been given a bad break, he concludes his famous speech with "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Deftly weaving basic facts with yards and yards of fancy, screenwriters Jo Swerling and Herman J. Mankiewicz serve up one of the most entertaining and inspiring baseball biopics of all time.