<|endoftext|>astic large-cell lymphoma.
In late April 2008, a minor league first baseman for the Red Sox named Anthony Rizzo, Boston's sixth-round pick in 2007, was diagnosed with limited-stage classical Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Each man not only beat cancer, but is thriving today in Wrigley.
In Lester's first eight starts this season in Chicago, teammate Rizzo smashed three homers and collected six RBI.
Their first encounter was in May 2008, shortly after Rizzo's diagnosis and a treatment at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Epstein, then Boston's general manager, brought a frightened kid to Fenway Park for consultation with a man who had just finished what Rizzo was starting.
Gene J. Puskar/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press
They ushered Rizzo and Lester into then-manager Terry Francona's office, shut the door and left them alone.
"Very few people in the world would have just the right words for someone in that situation," Epstein says of Lester. "But as an elite ballplayer himself who had just gone through it and beaten it, he was the perfect guy."
Epstein remembers how nervous Rizzo's parents were that day.
Rizzo remembers Lester's words of wisdom.
"Some of the things he said to me are some of the things I still pass on to kids today," Rizzo says. "He made me feel good. He just kind of said whenever I feel good, go out and do whatever I do, normally, when I was going through treatments.
"That's exactly what I did, just stay positive, and here I am now."
Says Lester: "Tony didn't really talk a whole lot. It was more asking questions about how treatment affected me, how long it took me to come back, the working out stuff."
Looking across at Rizzo's baby face that day, the emotions from his own battle came flooding back to Lester.
"I told him, 'Man, if you feel up to it, go work out,'" Lester says. "Go hit some balls off a tee, go field some ground balls. Go to the mall. Whatever you like to do.
"I like to fish and hunt, so I would go down to the river, just me, and sit in the river and fish. That was my getting away from it. I think that really helped me.
"You sit in the house, you end up thinking, 'Why me? Is [treatment] working? Is it not working?' All that stuff. You end up with all these thoughts going through your head."
At his first All-Star Game in Minnesota in 2014, Rizzo caught Lester, in his last days with Boston before the trade to Oakland, on the field during batting practice.
"I told him to come over here," Rizzo says. "Just messing around, of course."
Sort of. Everyone knew Lester was headed for free agency that winter.
"I know after he got called up in San Diego (Rizzo began his MLB carer with the Padres before being traded to the Cubs in 2012), I sent him a message, and just a text here and there through the years," Lester says. "He grabbed me when we were doing the team picture thing, and he was like, 'Hey, man, you'd love Chicago if you came here.' I said, 'We'll see, man, see where it all goes,' and sure enough."
Sometimes during a quiet moment, Lester and Rizzo still talk about those days, check in with each other and maybe ask, "How ya feeling?" Good? Great.
"Obviously, you don't ever want anybody to go through that," Lester says. "But it's a cool experience now that it's come full circle and everything's turned out fine."
Bryzzo
Look out. Kris Bryant, 24, and Anthony Rizzo, 26, have become as adept at tapping the "record" button on their cellphones as they are at depositing homers into the Wrigley Field bleachers.
This spring, they teamed on Instagram to begin "documenting" Grandpa Rossy's final season. Already, there are some classics:
Neither is around to record early this morning before the day-night doubleheader as relievers Clayton Richard and Travis Wood quietly talk with Ross and Lester, chairs pulled into a small huddle. Too bad, too, because as they talk, Arrieta engages on the fringe while laying on the clubhouse floor, working a foam roller under his hamstrings and back before standing and working a small rubber ball under the arch of his foot on the floor.
These are the moments that Grandpa Rossy one day will miss