Fans, 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. I have been in ballparks for
seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement
from you fans.
Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn’t consider it the highlight of his career
just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I’m lucky. Who wouldn’t consider it
an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert; also the builder of baseball’s greatest empire,
Ed Barow; to have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow Miller Huggins; then to
have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of
psychology-the best manager in baseball today-Joe McCarthy!
Sure, I’m lucky. When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat,
and vice versa, sends you a gift, that’s something! When everybody down to the
groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies, that’s
something.
When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles against
her own daughter, that’s something. When you have a father and mother who work all
their lives so that you can have an education and build your body, it’s a blessing! When
you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you
dreamed existed, that’s the finest I know.
So I close in saying that I might have had a tough break; but I have an awful lot to live
for!
