While Ken Bums considers the 1882 Dartmouth baseball scene to be the “best” baseball photograph of all time (October), I believe a far more appropriate selection would be the July 4, 1939, shot of Lou Gehrig humbly standing in Yankee Stadium. In a moment of supreme poignancy, facing his own mortality as he was being consumed by a hateful disease, Gehrig told a packed stadium that he was “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Gehrig’s simple decency and his bravery were captured with the click of a camera as he said good-bye to the team and sport he loved so deeply. What a lesson this provides us today as we view the sorry state of baseball.