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Who really said it

Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth

Spoken by Lou Gehrig 1903–1941 · New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939
Verified In copyright

Gehrig said it at Yankee Stadium on 4 July 1939, between games of a doubleheader against the Washington Senators, at the ceremony the Yankees called Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day. The Evening Star of Washington printed this exact sentence the following morning, in an Associated Press despatch by Sid Feder. Note where it sits: near the start of the address, not the end — the ending everyone remembers belongs to Gary Cooper and the 1942 film.

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

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Verified quote & credit

“Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth” Lou Gehrig, Yankee Stadium, 4 July 1939, as reported by the Associated Press in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 5 July 1939. It opened the speech; the 1942 film moved it to the end. Verified by quotle.info

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Lou Gehrig (the spoken address); the Associated Press and the successors of United Press (the 1939 wire reports)). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

Evoking the world of Lou Gehrig — New York Yankees first baseman · Baseball Hall of Fame, 1939. Theme: "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth". 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 "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth". 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 — Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day, Yankee Stadium, before 61,808 fans
Printed the next day
Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 5 July 1939, p. 14
Filed by
Sid Feder, Associated Press
What survives on film
A newsreel snippet of four sentences. There is no recording of the whole address.

Several times his voice broke and a sob escaped as he announced, “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Evening Star, 5 July 1939

That is the Associated Press wording, read from the Library of Congress’s scan of the Evening Star of 5 July 1939 ↗. The United Press filed the same sentence differently the same day — “I want to say now that I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth” ↗ — and the full texts that circulate today mostly read “the face of this earth.” All three agree on the phrase people actually remember.

The next-day wire report
Read the Evening Star page at the Library of Congress
Evening Star, 5 July 1939, page 14, at the Library of Congress

How we verified this

  • The exact sentence is in print within twenty-four hours. The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 5 July 1939, page 14 ↗ carries Sid Feder’s Associated Press report of the ceremony and quotes Gehrig directly: “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
  • A second wire service covered the same speech and took it down differently. The Washington Daily News of the same date ↗ and the Waterbury Democrat ↗ both ran Leslie Avery’s United Press despatch, which has Gehrig saying “For the past two weeks you’ve been reading about what a bad break I had. But I want to say now that I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”
  • There is no tape to settle it. Steve Wulf, writing for ESPN on the speech’s 75th anniversary ↗, records that “only a small snippet of the newsreel footage, only four sentences, has survived” — so every full text of the address is assembled from press accounts.
  • The line opened the speech. Wulf again: it “came at the very beginning of Gehrig’s speech, but for dramatic effect, it’s at the end of Cooper’s” in The Pride of the Yankees (1942). The Evening Star’s report bears that out — the quotation comes first, and Gehrig’s remarks about his old team-mates follow it.
  • Wikiquote’s sourced Gehrig page ↗ and Wikipedia ↗ both attribute the line to the 4 July 1939 speech; Wikipedia footnotes the competing readings (“Yet today”, “this” for “the”) rather than choosing between them.
In copyright

The address was delivered in 1939 and its earliest printings are 1939 newspapers — well after 1930, the point beyond which US works are not automatically in the public domain — so we assert no public-domain status. We have not traced whether those newspaper copyrights were renewed, and we prefer to understate the freedom of a text rather than overstate it. The Library of Congress scans linked here are served through its Chronicling America programme. 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 disputes that Gehrig said this. What almost everybody has wrong is where in the speech it came, and which words surrounded it.

The Pride of the Yankees (1942) Later variant

Gary Cooper’s screen version ends on the line, and that is the version most people carry in their heads. Wulf ↗ is explicit: it “came at the very beginning of Gehrig’s speech, but for dramatic effect, it’s at the end of Cooper’s.” The film’s speech is 169 words to Gehrig’s 277.

“the face of this earth” Popular variant

The full texts in wide circulation — the estate’s own site ↗ and Sports Illustrated ↗ — read “this earth”. Both 1939 wire reports read “the earth”, and Wikiquote ↗ follows them.

United Press, 5 July 1939 Reported wording drift

The UP transcription has no “I consider myself” at all: “I want to say now that I’m the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Two reporters, one microphone, two sentences — which is what happens when only four sentences of film survive ↗.

Gehrig said it, on 4 July 1939, and the Associated Press printed this exact sentence the next morning — see the Evening Star for 5 July 1939 ↗. He said it at the start of the speech, not the end.

Context

Why it mattered

Gehrig had taken himself out of the Yankees’ lineup on 2 May 1939 after 2,130 straight games, and the Mayo Clinic’s diagnosis became public on his thirty-sixth birthday. Two weeks later the club filled Yankee Stadium to say goodbye to him. He had not meant to speak at all; the master of ceremonies had already told the crowd he was too moved to.

Then he did, and the sentence he opened with inverted the whole occasion: sixty-one thousand people had come to pity him, and he told them he was lucky. The papers the next morning could not agree on the words, but every one of them led with that.

Sixty-one thousand people came to pity him. He opened by telling them he was the lucky one.

Read the full story

The Associated Press man, Sid Feder, filed a piece that is mostly about Babe Ruth — the two had not spoken in years — putting an arm round Gehrig and whispering “C’mon, kid, buck up now. We’re all with you.” Feder ends with Gehrig stumbling back to the clubhouse asking, “Did my speech sound silly? Did it?”

The reason the wordings differ is that there is almost nothing to check them against. Four sentences of newsreel survive. Samuel Goldwyn, who did not much like baseball, agreed to make The Pride of the Yankees after being shown that footage; his director then rewrote the speech over the objections of both the film’s editor and Eleanor Gehrig, who wrote to him: “I feel if you should depart from the original you would lose all of the simple charm.”

Explore

Filed under

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

Gratitude Courage 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. 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

The earliest documented printing (Chicago)

Feder, Sid. “Babe Chokes Up, Too, Bolstering Emotional Lou.” Associated Press. Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), 5 July 1939, 14. Reporting Lou Gehrig’s remarks at Yankee Stadium on 4 July 1939. A United Press despatch by Leslie Avery, published the same day in the Washington Daily News (28) and the Waterbury Democrat (16), transcribes the sentence differently.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth’?” Last verified 25 Sep 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/today-i-consider-myself-the-luckiest-man-on-the-face-of-the/

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