Making a pitch — for Lou

HEBER CITY — Michael Goldsmith winces at the memory. There he was, finally wearing Yankee pinstripes, standing on the pitcher's mound in Yankee Stadium. Over to the side, Derek Jeter was looking on, and A-Rod, and Mariano Rivera. Fifty thousand fans were in the stands; the stadium all but sold out on the Fourth of July.

Mark Teixeira, the Yankees first baseman, trotted over to catch the ceremonial first pitch.

And...

"One of my worst throws ever," moans Goldsmith. "It was just awful."

But, then, that was the point.

Goldsmith has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, the degenerative neuromuscular disorder for which there is no known cure. In September 2006, when he could still easily throw a baseball from centerfield to home plate, the popular BYU law professor was diagnosed with the disease.

Thirty-four short months later and he can barely walk or comb his hair.

But he can stand up for a cause, and what the 58-year-old Goldsmith pulled off last Saturday ranks as the biggest single-day awareness of ALS since the day 70 years ago, on July 4, 1939, when Gehrig, recently diagnosed with ALS, stood in Yankee Stadium and announced his retirement.

In a guest editorial published by Newsweek magazine last November, Goldsmith challenged Major League Baseball to do something on the 70th birthday of Gehrig's stirring speech — some call it the Gettysburg Address of baseball — that would draw attention to the insidious disease and aid ALS research.

Seven decades have passed, he pointed out, and still the disease remains unbeaten.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig read the editorial and, within days, began organizing support for the commemoration and the cause.

This past Saturday, on America's birthday, every major league game paused to remember Lou Gehrig and urge support to find a cure for the disease nicknamed after him. In big-league parks across the country, portions of Gehrig's "Luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech were read during the seventh- inning stretch, and all coaches, managers, players and umpires wore a "4ALS" patch — 4 was Gehrig's number.

In New York, the man who got the 4ALS movement started was invited to travel from his home in Utah and throw out the first pitch in Yankee Stadium.