My Top Five Sports Idols

In Lang, on the first page there is already an example for rhetoric, and it is none other Lou Gehrig's farewell address on July 4, 1939. If you don't know, Lou began having physical problems in 1938 that grew worse over the next year. After an atrocious April, Lou asked Yankees manager Joe McCarthy to take him off of the team's lineup, somone he wouldn't do without Lou forcing him. You see, he had played in 2,130 consecutive games up to that point, but after that he will never play the game again. That's over thirteen seasons of toughing it out every day, or about the length of time we attend public school (heck, our school year of 180 days is close to that of baseball's 162 games). So far in my education, I've had to have accrued over a year's worth of absences. The most amazing thing about the end to his streak, though, is that he initiated it on his own will. He knew he could not compete at an appropriate level, which would was even tougher to him since his tendencies were all right, just his physical abilities were rapidly deteriorated. Lou did not fade away into retirement. In his mid-30s, he had the same approach that he had used his whole career; he just couldn't perform it. ALS, now known as Lou Gehrig's disease, was the cause. What an interesting intro, because I've decided to put the Iron Horse fifth on my list. The fact that he wore pinstripes his entire career really hurts me to do this, but Lou was a far better man than just about everyone ever in the game.

I was only six when John Elway retired, but by then I had already become a Denver Broncos fan because of him. He went to college at Stanford, where I remember him most as the losing quarterback against Cal in 1982 ("The Stanford band is on the field!"). John was set to go down as a quarterback who never won big, having missed out on the Heisman and a bowl game appearance in college, as well as three losses in the Super Bowl. His final two seasons were memorable, though, as he led the Broncos to back-to-back Super Bowl wins and cemented his name in connection with "clutch performance" (over his career, he led the team to 47 of his 148 victories by scoring in the fourth quarter). He is our day's Johnny Unitas or Bart Starr. So that's number four.

I'm going to finish the other three tomorrow. It's 12:35AM right now, and I'm really tired. I didn't take a nap, so I won't have gotten any sleep out of the way, so sorry if I was asleep when you were talking to me or something this morning (since no one has time to read this before school). Good night.