July 4th and baseball have a rich, moving history.

Major League Baseball and the Fourth of July have a marriage that has lasted as long as the game itself. Every team plays on Independence Day and MLB makes it a special holiday by designing red, white and blue uniforms for each ball club. Tuesday’s games featured red and blue caps with shiny embossed logos that were for sale at every ballpark. The holiday itself has a very colorful history.

In 1881 and 1884, one pitcher threw complete games in a doubleheader sweep; in 1905, both starters went the distance in a 20-inning game; in 1925, a 32-year-old pitcher threw a no-hitter and collected three hits and two RBIs in a game; in 1939, a player hit two grand-slams and a third homer in his team’s 18-12 victory.

Modern-era baseball has seen a no-hitter on July 4th, Dave Righetti’s gem in 1983 that was the first no-no by a New York Yankee lefty in 66 years and the Bombers first since Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Nolan Ryan recorded his 3,000th strikeout on July 4th. The Red Sox hit a record-tying eight home runs to snap a nine-game losing streak, and brothers Tony and Billy Congiliaro hit homers in the same game for the first time on other Fourths of July.

The most memorable moment, however, occurred 78 years ago when a capacity crowd packed the original Yankee Stadium to honor all-star first baseman Lou Gehrig, who had been forced to retire from baseball after being diagnosed with the crippling and fatal illness Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, which has been better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease ever since.

The soft-spoken Gehrig, who was 36 at the time and a perennial all-star, almost did not speak because he was too moved by the moment. But after being encouraged by manager Joe McCarthy, Gehrig uttered perhaps the most famous two sentences in baseball history when he said, “Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

Gehrig died two years later, but his legacy as a player and his final words wearing a Yankee uniform mark perhaps the most cherished moment of baseball’s 136-year history on July 4th;  “. . . luckiest man on the face of the earth.”