The Name of a Champion

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.

—Samuel Johnson, English author, critic, and lexicographer (1709–1784)

In my second year of medical school, I entered a neuroscience lecture one September day as the New York Yankees were heading into the World Series. A list of numbers on the chalkboard was arranged in 4 columns that we began to copy down without knowing why, as is often the tradition in medical school. Our professor entered the room, lowered the projector screen in front of the numbers, and turned on the image of a smiling face wearing a Yankees baseball cap. The face was quickly recognizable to some. His name was known to us all. Over the next hour, we heard the poignant story of a man whose name had become synonymous with one of the most devastating and feared neurologic illnesses, yet whose most well-known words are that he considers himself “the luckiest man on the face of this …