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Who really said it

So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for

Attributed to Lou Gehrig 1903–1941 · New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939
Genuine beyond serious doubt, but the wording is not pinned to a contemporary source. In copyright

This is the last sentence of Gehrig’s farewell address at Yankee Stadium on 4 July 1939, and the wording here is the one his estate’s own site ↗ publishes. We file it as attributed rather than verified for one honest reason: only four sentences of the speech survive on film, and the contemporary newspaper reports we could read quote the opening lines and stop. Even Sports Illustrated, reprinting the estate’s text, renders this sentence with different words.

Last verified 25 Sep 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Unconfirmed quote & credit

“So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for” Lou Gehrig, closing his farewell address at Yankee Stadium, 4 July 1939. Wording as published by the Gehrig estate; no contemporary 1939 printing of this sentence was located. Traced by quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Lou Gehrig). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Lou Gehrig — New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939. Theme: "So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The source

Spoken
4 July 1939 — the closing line of the farewell address, Yankee Stadium
Wording published by
lougehrig.com, the estate’s official site, and Wikiquote
Contemporary printing
None found. The 5 July 1939 wire reports we read quote only the opening.
What survives on film
A newsreel snippet of four sentences — it does not reach the end of the speech.

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 been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. lougehrig.com, Farewell Address

That is the closing of the text lougehrig.com publishes as the Farewell Address ↗. Sports Illustrated’s “Full Text of Lou Gehrig’s Farewell Speech” ↗ reprints the same address, cites lougehrig.com as its source, and ends it “So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.” Two texts, one lineage, two sentences.

lougehrig.com: Farewell Address (archived)

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s sourced Lou Gehrig page ↗ carries this sentence in exactly this wording and attributes it to the “Speech made on Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium (July 4, 1939)”. It gives no citation beyond the occasion.
  • The estate’s own site, lougehrig.com ↗, publishes the full address ending on the same sentence. Most modern reprints trace back to this text.
  • The wording is not stable. Sports Illustrated ↗ reprints the address citing lougehrig.com and still ends it differently: “I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”
  • We looked for a contemporary printing and did not find one. The three 5 July 1939 pages we read — the Evening Star ↗, the Washington Daily News ↗ and the Waterbury Democrat ↗ — all quote the opening “luckiest man” passage and none of them reaches the close, and a search of the Library of Congress’s digitised 1939 newspapers for the phrase returns nothing. That is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence — but it is why this page says attributed.
  • It is also why the sentence is unfamiliar. Steve Wulf notes ↗ that only four sentences of newsreel survive, and that when Major League Baseball marked the speech’s 75th anniversary it saved “the last, best lines — words that Cooper never spoke” for the end: the 1942 film cuts them.
In copyright

The address was delivered in 1939, long after 1930, so we assert no public-domain status for it. The text reproduced here is the one published by the Gehrig estate’s official site. This is not legal advice.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

Nobody credits this sentence to anyone but Gehrig. The trouble is that it comes in at least two forms, and the version most people have heard is a film that cuts it entirely.

Sports Illustrated Popular variant

SI’s full text ↗ ends “I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for” — while citing lougehrig.com ↗, which ends “I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.” One of the two has been smoothed, and there is no recording to say which.

The Pride of the Yankees (1942) Later variant

Gary Cooper’s speech ends on “the luckiest man on the face of the earth” instead. Wulf ↗ calls these closing lines “words that Cooper never spoke”. If the sentence sounds unfamiliar, that is why.

A 1939 printing Mis-sourced

Pages that present this sentence as a documented quotation rarely say where it was first printed. We could not find it in a contemporary newspaper, and we are not going to imply that we did.

It is Gehrig’s closing line, published in this wording by his estate ↗ and Wikiquote ↗ — but the exact words rest on a text no 1939 source we could reach confirms.

Context

Why it mattered

The speech is remembered for its opening. Its ending is the harder sentence: a man of thirty-six whose diagnosis had been made public a fortnight earlier, standing in front of sixty-one thousand people, declining to be their tragedy. He was dead within two years.

The wording gets tidied in reuse — “a bad break” smoothed to “a tough break”, “I’ve got” to “I have”. Small edits, and they are the reason this page is filed as attributed.

Sixty-one thousand people, twenty-three months to live, and he closed by declining to be a tragedy.

Read the full story

The sentence before it is the one Gehrig reportedly cared most about: “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.” Eleanor Gehrig later fought the makers of The Pride of the Yankees over their rewriting of the address, telling Samuel Goldwyn that departing from the original would “lose all of the simple charm.”

For what it is worth, the parts of the speech that are documented in 1939 print survive in more than one wording too. The Associated Press and United Press transcriptions of the opening sentence, filed the same afternoon from the same microphone, do not match each other — so an unstable closing line is the expected condition of this text, not a sign that something is wrong with it.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Hope Resilience Mortality

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Library of Congress — Evening Star, 5 July 1939, p. A-14www.loc.gov

The Associated Press report the morning after the speech, printing "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
Library of Congress — Washington Daily News, 5 July 1939, p. 28www.loc.gov

The rival United Press transcription of the same sentence, filed the same day and worded differently.
Library of Congress — Waterbury Democrat, 5 July 1939, p. 16www.loc.gov

Leslie Avery’s United Press despatch in full, carrying the same wording as the Washington Daily News.
Steve Wulf — "An awful lot to live for" (ESPN, 2014)web.archive.org

The 75th-anniversary account: only four sentences of newsreel survive, and how the 1942 film rewrote and reordered the address.
lougehrig.com — Farewell Addressweb.archive.org

The text published by the Gehrig estate’s official site, the source most later reprints trace back to.
Wikiquote — Lou Gehrigen.wikiquote.org

Sourced quotation page, attributing both the opening and closing lines to the 4 July 1939 speech.

The author

About Lou Gehrig

Lou Gehrig

1903–1941 · New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939

Henry Louis “Lou” Gehrig (19 June 1903 – 2 June 1941) played seventeen seasons at first base for the New York Yankees and was nicknamed “the Iron Horse” for a streak of 2,130 consecutive games that stood for fifty-six years. He took himself out of the lineup on 2 May 1939; the Mayo Clinic’s diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis was made public on his thirty-sixth birthday, 19 June, and the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day two weeks later. He died less than two years afterwards, and in the United States the disease still carries his name.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Best available source (Chicago)

“Farewell Address.” lougehrig.com. The closing sentence of Lou Gehrig’s remarks at Yankee Stadium, 4 July 1939, as published by the estate’s official site and reproduced on Wikiquote. No contemporary 1939 printing of this sentence was located; Sports Illustrated, citing the same source, ends the address “I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘So I close in saying that I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for’?” Last verified 25 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/so-i-close-in-saying-that-i-might-have-been-given-a-bad/

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