When Aaron Boone worked as a broadcaster at ESPN, he knew he could count on Sarah Langs.
The baseball-obsessed researcher always had whatever stat the future Yankees manager needed while on-air. And as the two got to know each other, Boone could tell how deeply she loved the sport he had spent his entire life around.
“Her passion and her love for the game was infectious,” Boone said Tuesday while sitting beside Langs, who now works for MLB Network.
Langs is battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. The Yankees, as part of their annual HOPE Week initiative, hosted the 30-year-old and other women from the organization Her ALS Story. They received a tour of Monument Park and the team’s museum, and Langs joined Boone on the dais for his pregame press conference while the rest of the group watched.
Yankees ace Gerrit Cole then presented Langs with a team-signed “Baseball Is The Best” T-shirt. Langs frequently tweets the phrase, and the shirt highlights the letters that spell out “ALS.” RotoWear makes the shirt, and sales benefit Project ALS.
Cole held up a second team-signed shirt, which will be auctioned off to benefit the same organization. In addition, the Yankees wrote a $10,000 check to Project ALS.
Cole also told Langs’ parents that they were throwing out the ceremonial first pitches before Tuesdays game against the Orioles, a surprise reveal.
“I love baseball so much,” said Langs, who announced her fatal diagnosis on Oct. 6, 2022. “I’m so grateful for it. The one thing in my life that absolutely will not change at all. And that’s really, really important. But I never set out for baseball to love me back, but I’m beginning to process the idea that maybe it does. I’m just so, so grateful.”
Baseball and ALS, a neurological disease with no known cure, have been linked since Yankees Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with it in 1939. ALS took the Iron Horse’s life in 1941 at the age of 37.
“This is so, so important to put a spotlight on young women with ALS to show that not everyone looks like Lou Gehrig,” Langs said. “But even Lou Gehrig is not your typical case. He was much younger than the average ALS patient. He is not in that normal demographic either.”
The average ALS patient is usually male and between the ages of 40 and 60. Life expectancy typically ranges from three to five years from the time of diagnosis.
Despite the unfairness of his situation, Gehrig delivered his famous “Luckiest Man” speech at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939. Tuesday marked the speech’s 84th anniversary.
As part of a pregame ceremony, Gehrig’s full words were recited in interspersed video segments by Yankees players, Langs and the other women from Her ALS Story.
Langs also got to wear one of Gehrig’s used hats.
“It’s obvious, right, this connection?” she said. “I grew up loving baseball, and here I am with a disease that is known for baseball, for one of the greatest players of all time. So to have a tangible connection, that moment certainly was one that I didn’t expect to happen today. That was really, really powerful.”
Tuesday’s events put an exclamation point on everything Langs has done to raise awareness for ALS since she made her diagnosis public. She said that another ESPN colleague, Buster Olney, told her that she had the potential to make people pay attention to the disease, and she’s used her platform to do exactly that through hard times.
So have the other women who joined Langs in the Bronx.
“ALS is obviously a terrible disease that, as Sarah has said, is underfunded, and there’s no question that, over the last couple of months, a light has been shined on this disease,” Boone said. “Getting to see these women today — and really the joy in their eyes and their hearts and the way they’re able to express themselves and their gratitude in what is a difficult circumstance and diagnosis — that is inspiration.”
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