B-WAYNE, BASEBALL AND ALS
Singer-songwriter Bryan Wayne Galentine died after battling ALS on October 22, 2020 in Lebanon, Tennessee.
He was 53 years old.
Galentine was well known on the Nashville music circuit as the songwriter behind country hits like Tommy Shane Steiner’s “What If She’s an Angel,” and Chris Cagle’s “Country by the Grace of God,” which peaked at Nos. 2 and 33 respectively, in 2002 on the Hot Country Songs chart.
Following his ALS diagnosis, he recorded his first-ever full length album, “While You Wait,” dedicated to shed light and heighten awareness on ALS.
“Bryan tried to teach each of us to live in the moment and make memories with the ones we love,” shared his wife, Staci Starnes Galentine in a press statement.
‘B-Wayne’ — his moniker — was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, in 2017 and since then had been a passionate advocate for those suffering from the degenerative illness.
And he was the catalyzing force behind Major League Baseball’s Inaugural Lou Gehrig Day, scheduled for June 2, 2021, which will honor “The Iron Horse” and his fabled career, along with raising money to combat the disease which took his life.
And ultimately Galentine’s.
Galentine would not allow himself to succumb to the ravaging illness, until all his LGD ducks were in a row…signed, sealed and delivered.
The day promises to be a great one.
“We all have our own things that we can do individually,” commented Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken Jr. who will forever be inextricably linked to Gehrig, after breaking his consecutive games streak (2,130) in 1995.
(Ripken Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive games).
“But when we collectively come together in a big way and all 30 teams come together, and creating this day, the power that comes from that is remarkable.”
Thank you B-Wayne!!!
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis is a neurodegenerative disorder that slowly chokes the brain’s motor neurons, which control voluntary muscles.
There is no cure.
The progression marches slowly but steadily toward paralysis; fully acute minds find themselves trapped inside bodies that no longer function.
Of course, there are different variants and different cases.
Stephen Hawking, an outlier, lived for more than 50 years with it.
But more than 5,000 Americans are diagnosed with it every year, and almost all die within a half-decade.
A little more than two years passed between Lou Gehrig’s diagnosis and his death at 37.
More than eighty years later, the Hall of Fame first baseman of the New York Yankees remains the most famous ALS patient, with the condition colloquially referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
Baseball and the illness would be wedded forever.
In 2008, Michael Goldsmith, a lawyer with the disease, asked in a Newsweek op-ed why MLB didn’t more formally honor Gehrig.
The next year, on July 4, the date of the retirement speech in which he said famously — and for posterity — “Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth,” MLB paid tribute to Gehrig in all 15 stadiums holding games.
Goldsmith died four months later, and sadly, the homage to Gehrig did not continue.
B-Wayne, who had grown up playing baseball (and loved to say if he didn’t get hurt playing in college, he could have been a big leaguer) wanted to be the conduit — the everlasting tie — between MLB and the ALS community.
This fierce sentiment and desire, prompted him to tap out a text on June 24, 2019, to two friends in the ALS galaxy: Adam Wilson, who has the disease; and Chuck Haberstroh, whose mother does.
At 10:32 p.m., their phones pinged with this message from Galentine:
“don’t have to comment tonight. been meaning to email you. but do you think it would be possible and appropriate to approach mlb with doing something with Lou Gehrig like they’ve done Jackie Robinson? Not so much retire #4 but have everyone wear #4 one game a year? maybe the day he gave the speech?”
Wilson and Haberstroh liked the idea.
Maybe rather than everyone wearing Gehrig’s jersey number, they could sport patches that would include the letters ‘ALS’ for maximum awareness.
And instead of July 4, when Independence Day festivities could overshadow it, perhaps June 2 — the day of the first start in Gehrig’s 2,130-consecutive-games-played streak and remarkably, the date of his death in 1941, would be more fitting.
The three reached out to Jon “Boog” Sciambi, the longtime ESPN announcer and ALS advocate, to seek advice and guidance.
Sciambi didn’t disappoint.
As good as the idea was, he suggested that the best way to move it forward was to get all 30 clubs on board.
Then, the league couldn’t say no.
The cause was too good, the story too compelling.
Decades after Gehrig died, ALS remains a scourge, with hope found only in drug trials and experimental therapies.
Gehrig’s words, that July Fourth day, the optimism he radiated — “I might have been given a bad break,” he said, “but I’ve got an awful lot to live for.” — further inspired Galentine.
At first, his optimism overwhelmed him, as folks jumped on the bandwagon.
Support was slowly building but time was definitely not on his side.
His own condition was worsening and the mission’s progress was stagnating, but Galentine and his posse wouldn’t give up.
Wilson took B-Wayne’s exhortations to heart, and out of desperation, he was going to get his hands on the email addresses of team presidents around MLB and send a cold letter.
He started with Arizona’s president, Derrick Hall, and somehow, ended up hitting the lottery.
Hall immediately pinged him back and as it happened, he knew all too much about ALS; when he was a junior in high school, he would go visit his grandfather who was saddled with this insidious disease.
They would go to the pool, and Hall would lift him into the water, hold his arms and guide him to the deep end and back, for hours on end.
“I’ll never forget that,” Hall recalled. “And as much of a smile as you could see on his face, it was there.”
Hall was in, and he enlisted help.
At 3:03 p.m. ET on October 19, Hall sent an email to all 30 teams soliciting support for a league-wide Lou Gehrig Day.
Twins president David St. Peter and Red Sox president Sam Kennedy co-signed the effort.
It was happening.
Eight teams turned to 10 to 15 to 20 to 25.
And the next day, October 20, before the first game of the World Series, the Seattle Mariners became the 30th team to sign on.
More than a year of disappointment and sadness melted away in 24 hours.
Galentine won.
“That right there…was a good day,” he communicated to Staci before bed, using his eye-gaze technology.
He had once written a song — entitled, “A Good Day” — which began:
“Eight year old stands at the plate
One base hit’ll win the game
Swings that bat with all his might
He’s still grinnin’ when mom and dad tuck him in that night
You only get so many in this life
When it feels like everything you do goes right
And years from now you can still look back and say
That right there…was a good day”
The Inaugural Lou Gehrig Day proved — and will prove — to be a big success.
Every team with a home game on June 2nd displayed 4-ALS logos in their ballpark, commemorating Gehrig’s jersey number.
All players, managers and coaches wore a special “Lou Gehrig Day” patch on their uniforms, and red 4-ALS wristbands were made available to be worn, in-game.
(Teams that were off on the 2nd observed LGD the next day, and every road team will do so when they return home).
Special ceremonies and activities — ceremonial first pitches, the singing of the national anthem and on-field recognition — will center around the ALS community.
Steve Gleason, the former New Orleans Saints safety whose fight with ALS was captured in the documentary, “Gleason,” synthetically recited a portion of Gehrig’s famous “Luckiest Man” speech — in a video narrated by Cal Ripken Jr., and produced by MLB Network — that was shown on video boards during the fourth inning (or pregame in some ballparks) of all games.
A special charitable auction is ongoing at auctions.mlb.com to benefit the Sean M. Healey and AMG Center for ALS, at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was selected by MLB and the Lou Gehrig Day Committee, to be the beneficiary of all charitable fundraising efforts centralized out of the Commissioner’s Office.
On behalf of ALS, individual clubs will continue to work directly with — and fundraise for — national or local organizations they have historically supported.
God bless B-Wayne and the rest.
All people should be this good, and act so nobly.
[Editor’s Note: This piece was written by Mr. Kaplan in June 2021.]
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