Did you know?

On July 4, 1939, one of the most memorable moments in American sports history happened. Nearly 62,000 fans and members of the 1927 New York Yankees championship team were in attendance when former first baseman Lou Gehrig gave an emotional farewell between games of a doubleheader against Washington. Two months earlier, Gehrig was forced out of the lineup for the first time in 2,130 games by a debilitating form of infantile paralysis. Looking haggard and tired, Gehrig choked back emotion and spoke. "What young man wouldn't give anything to mingle with such men as I have for all these years? You've been reading about my bad break for weeks now. But today I think I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth."

This Week in

Illini and Spartan History

ILLINI HISTORY - Homer Dahringer, a basketball letterman in 1912 for Coach T.E. Thompson and in 1913 for Ralph Jones, came to the University of Illinois from Waukegan Central High School. When World War I broke out, he went through the First Officers Training Camp at Fort Sheridan in 1916. Dahringer was commissioned August 15, 1917, having studied aviation in Austin, Tex. He was ordered to France in March 1918. His job was to fly behind enemy lines in a two-seat reconnaissance plane, make observations and collect information and photographs of value to American gunners. In September of '18, his plane was shot down by a German Fokker. The Armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, but it wasn't until Jan. 3, 1919 that Dahringer's family received a telegram from the U.S. Army confirming his death. Dahringer's name adorns one of the columns at Memorial Stadium.

SPARTAN HISTORY - Born June 29, 1942 in Louisville, Ky., Sherman Lewis earned consensus first-team All-America honors as a halfback in 1963 while finishing third in the Heisman Trophy voting, equaling the best-ever finish by a Spartan. Following his professional playing career, he returned to Michigan State as an assistant coach under Hall of Famer Duffy Daugherty in 1969, and remained on the Spartan staff as an assistant coach until 1982. Lewis died on May 15, 2026.