The first person I thought of this week was my cousin, Jerry Fitzgerald Sr. He might have been the funniest guy I ever met, mainly because he laughed at everything. Even my jokes.
I also thought of Jim Daly, a football teammate of mine in high school. Jim was not the biggest guy in the world. I was bigger. But he was fierce while I was timid. Timid does not make a good football player. Fierce does.
I also think of George Mazareas, who was literally “Curious George.” He wanted to know everything, and made terrific inroads toward achieving that goal. He was also a good enough basketball player to perform overseas in Greece.
More. There’s Dick Kelly, sports information director at Boston College. Wonderful guy. Even though his main function was to report on basketball, he and I loved our hockey talks as I’m a Northeastern guy and our schools played in the Beanpot.
Finally, I give you Pete Frates, who, with all of the aforementioned, was the bravest person I ever knew. Pete was a St. John’s Preppie, like me, and boy did I love covering his baseball games. The guy was amazing, and, truthfully, I don’t know why he wasn’t on a Major League Baseball highlight film at least once a week. But his legacy goes far beyond baseball. Pete stared down the ferocious dragon, eye to eye, and helped create the Ice Bucket Challenge, a fun way to raise money to slay that dragon one day.
Monday was Lou Gehrig Day, when the Major Leagues paid tribute to the Yankees’ first baseman, who died on June 2, 1941, from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. His death was so tragic, and so public, that ALS is now called “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”
Gehrig died of ALS, and so did the other people mentioned above. They all went through the same thing Gehrig did. The only difference is none of them made speeches (not that Gehrig was wrong to put his condition in perspective as eloquently as he did. Lord no).
Gehrig may be the personification of A.E. Houseman’s “To an Athlete Dying Young.”
“And early though the laurel grows/It withers quicker than the rose.”
All of these ALS victims, whether or not they were athletes, all died before their time. They knew what their ultimate fate would be, and, imprisoned in their own bodies by their condition, were forced to make peace with it.
I cannot think of anything more cruel than to be diagnosed with a terminal illness and have to live upward to 20 years, like George Mazareas did, with the knowledge that there was no hope.
Frates was 27 when he was diagnosed. Shortly after he found out he had ALS, Frates was at an alumni event at The Prep and looked pretty good. I said that to his father, John, who responded by saying one of the saddest things I ever heard about ALS.
“Can you imagine,” John Frates said, “having to dress your 27-year-old son?”
Yet, Pete was a picture of optimism right up until the end, which occurred in 2019.
All of these people had their moments of superhuman strength in the face of this adversity. Daly showed up at many alumni events, and his family and friends had an annual comedy night to raise money. Kelly worked at every BC football game until he became too sick to do it. Fitzgerald made a farewell trip to Ireland with his family before he passed.
Faced with the impossible and stark choice of living or dying, these guys lived. Maybe, they even got more out of life in the time they had left than they would have otherwise.
However you choose to remember Lou Gehrig, please make sure that if you know someone who has the same sickness, be with them. Go up to them at events and say, “Hi.” And make them feel as if they are still important parts of your life.
As Reggie Jackson so eloquently said once, “Let’s not remember Lou Gehrig simply by naming a disease after him.”
Let us honor these victims for the extraordinary courage they demonstrate in coming to terms with their fate, and the grace they show in living out their lives.
