{"id":39706,"date":"2026-06-02T21:24:31","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T02:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/?p=39706"},"modified":"2026-06-02T21:24:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T02:24:31","slug":"flach-makes-pitch-to-defeat-als","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/39706-flach-makes-pitch-to-defeat-als\/","title":{"rendered":"Flach Makes Pitch to Defeat ALS"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pdfprnt-buttons pdfprnt-buttons-post pdfprnt-top-right\"><a href=\"javascript: window.print()\" class=\"pdfprnt-button pdfprnt-button-print\" target=\"_self\" ><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/wp-content\/plugins\/pdf-print\/images\/print.png\" alt=\"image_print\" title=\"Print Content\" \/><span class=\"pdfprnt-button-title pdfprnt-button-print-title\">Print<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>Effingham&#8217;s Phil Flach made his pitch count Tuesday night at Wrigley Field.<\/p>\n<p>Flach, who is battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, had plenty of stamina to fire a low pitch to Cubs mascot Clark the Cub. Flach was assisted by his son Andrew to make the pitch, but was up and out of his wheelchair to make the delivery.<\/p>\n<p>Flach was accompanied by his wife Karen and his children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n<p>The Cubs and all of Major League Baseball marked June 2nd as Lou Gehrig Day, the date on which Gehrig died from ALS.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Cindy Eder of Effingham for the photo of the Flach family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Effingham&#8217;s Phil Flach made his pitch count Tuesday night at Wrigley Field. Flach, who is battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, had plenty of stamina to fire a low pitch to Cubs [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":39707,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Flach Makes Pitch to Defeat ALS - Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader, 979XFM and KJ Country 102.3<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Effingham&#039;s News and Sports Leader\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thexradio.com\/news\/local-news\/39706-flach-makes-pitch-to-defeat-als\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Flach Makes Pitch to Defeat ALS - 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