Living Out Loud: Sports, Cancer, and the Things Worth Fighting For

INTRODUCTION

Good things do come from having cancer. It is a little strange to read that line out loud, but it was actually easy to write, because it’s true. At least for me. Since being diagnosed with leukemia in April 2014, my outlook on life has been inversely proportional to the effect my disease has had on my body. I have been able to touch people in ways I never thought possible. I have formed friendships with random strangers around the country who are battling their own enemy. I have savored every ounce of sunshine, of sea breeze, of buffalo shrimp, of private moments with my bride and children. The cancer has reinforced my passion for my life’s work and my desire to continue doing it.

Most of all, having cancer has made me more determined than I have ever been. I will beat the odds and I will beat leukemia and I sure as hell won’t let it stop me from living my life. I have always been a public figure because of my work in sports television and, yes, because of my fancy jackets. When I was diagnosed two years ago, I made the decision that I was not going to hide from the cancer or attempt to shield others from the news. I have lived my life out loud for decades and I was not going to change now.

I am as sunny in my outlook as my fanciful suits are bright and, as you will read, I have always been optimistic and fearless. But make no mistake: this battle has not been easy, and there have been some very dark days. No one wants to see me complain, see me in my worst moments, so I make sure I summon the strength to be positive when others are around.

When I was first approached about the idea of a book, I hesitated, for though I’m kind of like the Forrest Gump of the sporting world, like Forrest, I never intended to be the face of anything. In fact, I’ve always liked my role because I could be there without being the guy. Biographies are for heroes and famous people, I thought. But as strangers approached me on the street for photos, as patients sought counsel in the hallways of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and as handwritten letters overwhelmed my mailbox daily, I agreed that if telling my story helps just a few folks looking for some meaning in this raw deal we call cancer, it would be worth it. Despite my determination to win the battle, I don’t know what is in store for me long-term, but I want people to know that even if they’re reading this after I’m gone, I never quit and neither should they.

What follows are the collected moments that have filled the journey of my life and my battle of the past two years, and, most important, reflections that were perhaps compelled by the situation in which I’ve found myself. I don’t have the answers, or a recipe for how to beat cancer or, more simply, how to live your life. All I can do is share my story.

I often think about the famous movie The Pride of the Yankees. It has always been one of my go-tos for inspiration. During the final scene, where Gary Cooper delivers Lou Gehrig’s famous farewell speech, I always find myself leaning in …

People all say that I’ve had a bad break. But today … today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

The Iron Horse and I have something in common. What we might’ve imagined a terminal diagnosis would do to our spirits, it summoned quite the opposite: the greatest appreciation for life imaginable.

Outside of the main entrance of MD Anderson Cancer Center sits a nondenominational chapel for families and patients, and resting in front of the chapel is a beautiful sculpture with an engraving of part of a Victor Hugo poem:

Be like the bird who

Halting in his flight

On limb too slight

Feels it give way beneath him

Yet sings

Knowing he hath wings

I am the bird and I will keep singing until I can’t sing any longer—and then I will sing some more.

PART I

THE MAKING OF ME

1

LET’S PLAY TWO

I was as nervous as I’d ever been. I’ve jumped out of airplanes, swum with sharks, climbed the Great Wall of China, run with the bulls in Pamplona, been arrested—a few times—and recently been told I have months to live. But as I stood in the dugout waiting to be introduced, I could actually feel my heart beating through my blue dress shirt underneath my all-white linen suit. My fingertips were so clammy, they left sweat marks on the baseballs I used for my warm-up pitches under the stands, and I was rocking back and forth on my feet when Cubs manager Joe Maddon, who was to present me with a personalized Cubbies jersey prior to my pitch, walked up to me and lightened the mood with a little banter. As I looked around at the forty thousand Cubs fans in sold-out Wrigley Field on that June evening in 2016, I realized this baseball team, this place, was the touchstone by which I could measure my whole life.

Almost all of my childhood birthdays were spent here, and in the weeks leading up, classmates would try to curry favor with me—bribing me with baseball cards and their lunch snacks—knowing that an invitation to Wrigley hung in the balance. I always got autographs before games from our Cubs heroes, though my father would make me share my prized signatures with my friends who were a bit more reserved—which angered me. One pregame, I remember getting Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Tony Taylor, and Don Zimmer autographs on their baseball cards. Dad allowed me to keep Banks and Williams but made me give Taylor and Zimmer to my friends who were in tears at their failure to match my aggressiveness.

My bedroom in Batavia, Illinois, about fifty miles from Wrigley, was awash in Cubs paraphernalia—Cubs sheets, Cubs pillowcase, Cubs backpack. I even drew the Cubs logo on all of my school folders and binders, just in case a classmate was unsure of my loyalties.

In my father’s old briefcase, a gold-colored aluminum box with two flaps, I kept my most prized possessions as a child—baseball cards. The Topps sets came out every spring, and Schielke’s Grocery on Main Street sold the cards in packages of twenty, along with a piece of pink bubblegum, for just a nickel. My Aunt Lil kept me well stocked with a pack in her weekly grocery shopping. Opening a pack was like Christmas morning. The scent of a pink stick of bubblegum was the aroma of a forthcoming afternoon of blowing bubbles. But more important, it was the concealment of what was stacked below. A Hank Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, or, better yet, a beloved Cub: a George Altman, an Al Spangler, a Bob Will, or—a winning lottery ticket—an Ernie Banks, a Ferguson Jenkins, or a Billy Williams.

I devoured the cards, memorizing and reciting the batting statistics, hometown, and height and weight of each player. I looked for deals with my friends, trying to complete a team set and, of course, was always open to a trade that involved a Cubbie.

When we weren’t brokering baseball card deals, we were on the sandlot next to Peterson’s Foundry, which churned out hot metal every afternoon. The lot was really just dirt with a few patches of dead grass, but it was big enough for us to live out our dreams on. We would play four-on-four games of baseball, with actual bases thirty feet apart and intricate rules for what counted as a double or a triple. We could stay out all day in the summer, just like my Cubbies would.

Once we were eight years old and eligible to play Little League, I was crushed when I was drafted by the Batavia Body Company White Sox and not the Batavia Central Pattern Works Cubs. The Little League field was right by the Fox River, and you could often find me at third base in the springs and summers, where I had more talent fielding ground balls than making contact as a hitter. In fact, taking pitched balls to the head and upper torso seemed to increase my on-base percentage.

In high school, my friends and I took the train from Geneva Station, the depot closest to Batavia, into Chicago for games, my parents even giving me their blessing to play hooky from school once in a while to catch a Cubs matinee—all Cubs home games back then were afternoon games. I nearly always got away with it. Nearly. One time, my high school coach caught me on TV as I was catching a foul ball. (Though now that I think about it, why was Coach Tom McMahon watching the game during school hours?)

My decision to attend Northwestern University in Evanston, near Chicago, instead of accepting an appointment to West Point, was tipped by the fact that I wanted to be able to escape on the L train to Wrigley at will. I perfected my plan by choosing morning classes just in case I heard the call of the ivy, which I often did.

At the end of the Cubs’ 1972 season, my classmate Dan DeWitt (whom we called Dimmer) and I hopped on the train to catch the Cubbies’ season finale. We scored tickets on the third-base side, right behind the field tarp just beyond the dugout. I had it in my mind that at some point during the game, I was going to run onto the field, to experience—if only for a fleeting moment—the Wrigley grass under my feet. As soon as the Cubs closed things out in the top of the ninth inning, I blurted out, Let’s go!

Without waiting to see if Dimmer was on board, I sprinted across the third-base line and onto the infield as bewildered Cubs players stood by, I like to think, amused. I touched second base and then ran toward first, by now being hotly pursued by Chicago police officers. I made it to first base and kept running, not toward home but rather toward the stands. I lunged over the fence on the first-base line as thousands of fans stood and cheered. As I raced up the bleacher steps, I noticed Dimmer right behind me. We ran down the ramp at Sheffield Avenue and Addison Street, with the officers still some thirty yards behind us. I thought we would make it. What I didn’t know was that the officers had radioed ahead for security to close down the exit gates, and Dimmer and I were quickly in custody, handcuffed together. They walked us back up the ramp, down the stands, and, unbelievably, across the field toward the holding cells.

We get to do this twice! I said to Dimmer with a smile.

What was my obsession with the Chicago Cubs? Was it the white uniforms with thin blue pinstripes that brought me in? Was it the afternoon games at the friendly confines of Wrigley, with the ivy, the smell of beer, and the drama of sport? Or maybe it was the joy of watching grown men play a kids’ game with a smile? No, my love affair with the Cubs starts and ends with Ernest Ernie