Sport: In Memoriam

In every ball park, flags drooped at half-mast. In New York's Polo Grounds, Brooklyn's Ebbets Field and Detroit's Briggs Stadium—where New York ball clubs were playing—tier upon tier the fans stood bareheaded for a minute of silent tribute. In baseball's Hall of Fame at Cooperstown, N.Y., mourners filed past a black-draped plaque. For the baseball world last week mourned 37-year-old Lou Gehrig, onetime Yankee first baseman, who Lad succumbed after two years to a rare, incurable disease known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

U.S. sportswriters, the most sentimental members of a notoriously softhearted craft, have blubbered over many a death before. Fortnight ago...