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This Saturday will be the 70th Anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous speech at Yankee Stadium. To mark the occasion, his speech will be read at every ballpark on Saturday during the seventh-inning stretch, and game-worn equipment and uniforms will be auctioned with the proceeds going to ALS research. Selig got the idea when he read Michael Goldsmith's piece in Newsweek last November. An excerpt from the article:

At some point, we talked about what Major League Baseball could do to fight ALS, and I realized that next July 4 will mark the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous farewell speech at Yankee Stadium. Since his retirement, more than 600,000 Americans have shared Gehrig's fate, as medical science has made virtually no progress toward finding a cure. Through the years some players and a few teams have occasionally helped raise funds, but Major League Baseball has never taken comprehensive action against ALS. Defeating ALS will require the same type of determination, dedication and drive that Gehrig and Cal Ripken demonstrated when they set superhuman records for consecutive games played. With this in mind, why not make July 4, 2009, ALS-Lou Gehrig Day? Dedicate this grim anniversary to funding research for a cure; every major- and minor-league stadium might project the video of Gehrig's farewell, and teams, players and fans could contribute to this cause. An event of this magnitude has the potential to raise millions, dwarfing the relatively scant sums that ALS walks, rides and similar small-scale efforts have produced.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4msaZTJrTA"]YouTube - Lou Gehrig's speech[/ame]