Major League Baseball (MLB) today honors famed Yankee Great Lou Gehrig, who died on this day in 1941 of ALS, now known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease and still completely uncurable.

The Iron Horse, as he is known for his consecutive game streak, played 17 years for the Yankees and is widely considered one of the greatest players to ever have taken the field. He had to retire at age 36 due to his diease, and in the year immediately preceding his retirement, hit .295 with 29 home runs while barely able to walk.

In our modern media-obsessed era, unless someone slam dunks a basketball to win a game or scores a last-second touchdown to seal a victory, he is not celebrated nor his name even mentioned on the evening sportscast. Consider that compared to Lou Gehrig, who, only scarce months from his demise due to one of the most debilitating diseases humankind confronts, was able to pronounce himself before a stadium crowd as “the luckest man on the face of the earth” to have been able to earn a nice living playing a boy’s sport in the middle of the Great Depression.

Lou Gehrig, the self-proclaimed luckiest man alive, was taken from his blessed life at age 37. You can call his attitude a slam dunk for its humility and appreciation for a life well lived.