This news hits close to home
The Red Sox announced yesterday that rookie lefthanded pitcher Jon Lester has cancer. It's a treatable form of anaplastic large cell lymphoma. The brief press release, delivered by the team at the request of Lester's family shortly before 6 p.m., said treatment will begin within a week.
This is the way life works, I guess. Our region gets all wrapped up in the wins and losses of the local baseball team -- the Sox' season gets hopelessly derailed by injuries, bad luck, and poor play -- and just when we are all caught up in the noise and nonsense of BoSox woes, we are snapped back into reality by the news that one of the young ballplayers has a life-threatening condition.
Jon Lester's dad, John, is a sergeant with the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, which is headquartered in Tacoma, Wash. The pitcher's mom, Kathie, is an employee in the public works department. Jon is their only child and he was born in January 1984.
Lester, 7-2 with a 4.76 ERA in 15 starts since he was called up in June, left the Red Sox when they were in Seattle last weekend and flew to Boston, where he was examined by doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital. At some point this week, the Lester family was informed that Jon has cancer. Now we all know. And we pray.
I called Jon Lester's dad last night; both as a reporter and as a parent. The Red Sox are a big deal in our community and I wanted him to know that thousands of people who have never met his son are now praying for Jon Lester as if he were a member of their family. That's what it's like when you come to New England and play for the Red Sox. The Nation adopts you as one of its own. People genuinely care.
But as a parent, I knew the last thing he wanted to do was to speak to some cellphone-wielding reporter he'd never met. This is private time for the Lester family. We need to respect that, even those of us in the news business.
``It's too much of a roller coaster right now," said the pitcher's father. ``We're on information overload, just taking it all in. I understand you have a job to do, but right now, we're just keeping it within the family."
There aren't many times in life when you can truthfully say, ``I know what you are feeling right now," but this was one of those times. I told John Lester that I have a daughter, one year younger than Jon, who was successfully treated for cancer in Boston a long time ago.
When you first learn that your child has cancer, it knocks you to your knees. You forget about everything else. You stop eating, sleeping, and looking in the mirror. You take phone calls from well-wishers, but you can't really hear what they are saying and you can't remember much of it later on. You search into the eyes of the doctors, looking for clues and deeper meanings. You ask questions and write down answers. When you finally go to sleep, you wake up and your first thought is that this was just a bad dream -- but then you smell the hospital smell all around and you know it's true.
Jon Lester has relatives in the medical profession and he is part of a baseball organization that has adopted the Jimmy Fund as its charity. Ted Williams befriended Dr. Sidney Farber, the godfather of modern chemotherapy, and with the help of the Red Sox the Jimmy Fund has saved thousands of lives. Sox flagship station WEEI annually raises millions of dollars with a late-summer Jimmy Fund radiothon. Sox CEO Larry Lucchino is a survivor of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. When it comes to beating cancer, the Sox know how to get it done.
Lester and his parents are in for a difficult time, but there is comfort in this distress. They will meet strangers who will rally 'round them, a network of dedicated workers and survivors standing guard for strength, support, and sympathy.
It's easy to spend your life wanting more and being envious of others, but consider what just happened to John and Kathie Lester: Their only child, an enormously gifted athlete who commanded a $1 million signing bonus when he was only 18 years old -- then made it to the big leagues when he was only 22 -- has been diagnosed with cancer.
Let's try to remember that somebody else out there is always doing better than us, and there's always somebody doing worse. We're all day-to-day from here to eternity. Be thankful for what you have. Give your kids a hug.
Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. His e-mail is dshaughnessy@globe.com. 