Former Gopher, NBA player Chris Engler persisting in battle with ALS

The Fourth of July fell on a Tuesday in 1939, and the New York Yankees were playing the traditional holiday doubleheader, this time at home against the Washington Senators.

The crowd that day in the House That Ruth Built was 61,808, The retired Babe was in attendance to help honor his co-legend, Lou Gehrig, who was now being sent into retirement by what had been a mysterious loss of coordination and strength.

Gehrig’s ironman streak had ended at 2,130 regular-season games in early May. He tried to play a minor league game in June, had to leave the field and then went to the Mayo Clinic.

The mystery was quickly solved by Dr. Harold Habein, the first Mayo doctor to examine Gehrig. He was afflicted with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the same ALS that had taken the life of Habein’s mother.

Growing up in the 1950s, it took a couple of decades to hear this affliction referred to as anything other than “Lou Gehrig’s Disease.”

Sadly, all these decades later, we don’t require an association with baseball’s legendary “Iron Horse” to relate to this terrible affliction.

It is ALS, and we have heard about and seen it appear almost out of nowhere for too many familiar people, to now react in one of two ways: a stunned silence or an “Oh, my God.”

Which was the reaction when Charley Walters, the unstoppable notes columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, revealed publicly in 2021 that Chris Engler had been diagnosed in May with ALS.

Reaction: “Great dude. And a 7-foot man with this. Oh, my God.”

That November, there was an ALS event with hockey player and state Sen. David Tomassoni, former Gophers infielder Mike Bruss and Engler at Ridder Arena.

Tomassoni died in August 2022 at 69. Bruss died in October 2023 at 68.

Engler turned 65 in March. Dennis Fitzpatrick, my basketball man from St. Paul, told me about taking a few guys out to Lake Elmo to spend an afternoon with the former Gophers and NBA player.

“Same Engler, just can’t use his arms,” Fitzpatrick said.

That turned out to be an accurate scouting report, based on my two-hour visit with the Englers — Chris and Cara — a few days before the Fourth of July, which was the 85th anniversary of Gehrig’s “Luckiest Man” speech at Yankee Stadium.

“Should’a been here Sunday,” Engler said. “Dave Winey, Kos [Dan Kosmoski], Bones [Mike Cervoney] — you know Bones — and Jim Cammarato were here. That was quite a story-telling session.”

We had a mini-version of that. I was surprised immediately that Chris was standing up straight on his long legs in the living room.

Cara has made herself a fierce student on the subject and said: “Chris has a form of ‘limb onset’ ALS. Generally, it’s not as fast-acting as ‘bulbar onset,’ which took David Tomassoni so quickly.”

Chris was sitting in a lounge chair, and with a slight catch in his voice said: “David became a great friend of ours in a short time.”

The legs work for Chris at this time, but his neck is rigid and the arms don’t work on their own. There was a medication delivered to the door as I was there. There is workout equipment, including at the condo that the Englers own in Lutsen.

“We’re still good with the condos, but bad luck with the Lutsen Lodge resort nearby,” Engler said. “It burned down.”

Chris would’ve shaken his head at the irony of another complication in life, but he doesn’t do that so well these days.

The third Engler, daughter Carina, has been studying at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. They get her home for three weeks later in the summer and can’t wait.

Her full name is Carina Christine Rebecka. “CCR … my favorite band,” Engler said.

Funny, but not the real reason for this extended name. Engler’s post-NBA travels included playing in Italy, France and Sweden.

Cara was with him in Sweden in 1991. They befriended teammate Roland Rahm and his family, including 10-year-old daughter Rebecka.

“She was the greatest young girl,” Engler said. “So courageous. She died of cancer.”

Chris Engler can give you a thousand anecdotes from his basketball days at Stillwater, his bench-sitting for the Gophers, his prominence for two Western Athletic Conference champions at Wyoming, his bench-sitting (primarily) in the NBA, his time in Europe, and law school, and teaching in public schools.

Cara and Chris can talk with hope of ongoing treatments to slow ALS and perhaps — 80-plus years after the death of Gehrig on June 2, 1941 — that researchers will find the big answer.

Nothing’s going to tell you more about the Englers, though, than remembering a courageous 10-year-old girl they came to admire in Sweden a decade earlier when naming their daughter.