Las Vegan’s letter to Bud Selig remembered on Lou Gehrig Day

On the wall of the townhome where Rob Miech resides hangs a framed letter written on official Major League Baseball stationery. It is dated Jan. 10, 2013, and signed by Bud Selig.

It was received shortly after Miech, a longtime Las Vegas resident and contributing sports writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, wrote a letter to the then baseball commissioner. It said his father, Al, was battling amyotrophic lateral sclerois — Lou Gehrig’s Disease, named for the former Yankees’ first baseman who played 2,130 consecutive games before the dreaded ailment knocked him out of the lineup.

Baseball’s “Iron Horse” died on June 2, 1939 — on the same date that 14 years earlier Yankees’ predecessor Wally Pipp had complained of a headache and Gehrig replaced him.

It’s now the date on which the game will honor him.

The first Lou Gehrig Day is Wednesday. He joins Jackie Robinson and Roberto Clemente as the only ballplayers to have a day named in their honor by the league.

But when Rob wrote to Selig eight years ago, there was no Lou Gehrig Day. That was sort of the point of the letter. His father was fading fast, and he wanted to know why baseball wasn’t doing more to call attention to ALS, a deadly disease that has no cure.

Or if it was, why didn’t the public know more about it?

Another Brew Crew

“My folks are from Milwaukee; I was born in Milwaukee. I thought that might resonate with him,” said Rob about Selig, who also was born in the renowned beer town and owned the Milwaukee Brewers before taking over stewardship of the game.

Rob congratulated Selig on MLB’s Stand Up for Cancer campaign during the World Series.

“But here you have a disease that is so tied to one of the sport’s greats,” he wrote. “It wasn’t accusatory. I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t sad. I had this situation with my dad that was tugging at my heart.

“Then I received this,” he said about a return letter typed on official MLB stationery.

Wrote Selig:

I am very sad to hear about your father. It is a heartbreaking story. We have cooperated and worked a lot over the years with the ALS organization and have tried to assist them in a myriad of ways. I would tell you that our contributions to ALS have not been in any way minimal …”

Small needle, big haystack

Al Miech dropped out the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee to get married and raise and support a family. The self-made man would go on to become president and CEO of Transamerica Financial Services. But he always kept a place in his heart for Milwaukee and its sports teams.

Rob said his first conscious memory of his father “was walking past the bathroom of our home and steam coming from everywhere. I could barely see my dad — he was thawing out from the Ice Bowl,” he said about the Green Bay Packers’ victory over Dallas in the celebrated 1967 NFL title game.

Al died on Jan. 5, 2014. Rob wrote Selig another letter to inform the commissioner. He enclosed a book he had written about Bryce Harper to thank Selig for his thoughtful letter. The commissioner wrote Rob and the writer’s mother, Becky, to express condolences.

And now, on Wednesday, baseball players will wear a patch on their uniforms with a red “4-ALS” in honor of Lou Gehrig — and, in some small part, Al Miech and countless others.

“In no way do I think ‘Wow, these letters might have triggered Lou Gehrig Day.’ This is maybe half a needle in a big haystack,” Rob said, adding that watching Wednesday’s games would be difficult.

No crying in baseball? Not on the day the game honors the man who died the same way your father did.

“I can’t watch ‘Pride of the Yankees.’ I have a Lou Gehrig book — I can’t read it. Maybe some day …”

We were talking at lunch, and right after Rob said that, a plate of chicken wings dripping in sauce were delivered to our table. He took the framed letter from Selig that meant so much and set it way aside for safekeeping.

Contact Ron Kantowski at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow @ronkantowski on Twitter.