Professor Who Put in Motion MLB’s ‘4ALS’ Dies

Michael Goldsmith, whose guest column in Newsweek in 2008 inspired Major League Baseball to hold the “4ALS Awareness” initiative this July 4 that raised awareness about ALS as well as financial support for The ALS Association and three other organizations leading the fight against the disease, has passed away, according to the New York Times.

Goldsmith, a Woodruff J. Deem professor of law at Brigham Young University in Utah, was diagnosed with ALS in 2006. He was 58 years old when his battle against ALS ended on Sunday at a hospice in Albany, N.Y.

Goldsmith, in Newsweek, asked MLB do more to fight the ALS, the disease that took the life of legendary New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig on June 2, 1941. Not only did MLB and its commissioner, Bud Selig, decide that commemorating the 70th anniversary of Gehrig’s famous “Luckiest Man Alive” farewell speech would be the ideal time to have the initiative, it also honored Goldsmith at Yankee Stadium, where he threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

The initiative helped elevate awareness about Lou Gehrig’s Disease to perhaps its highest level ever.

Goldsmith is survived by his wife, Carolyn Goldsmith, and his two children from a previous marriage, Jillian Goldsmith, and Austen Goldsmith, both of New York, as well as two sisters, Lynn Goldsmith and Edna Goldsmith, and their mother, Anitta Goldsmith of Albany.