With his cancer in remission, Salem’s Anthony Rizzo is fired up to play baseball again

It made no sense.

Anthony Rizzo was filled was boundless energy. He was an 18-year-old starting his first year of Class A baseball and buzzed around the field and clubhouse with such fervor that teammates dubbed him the team’s biggest eighth grader. He played night after night in front of huge crowds (by South Atlantic League standards, anyway) in Greenville, S.C.

So where was the lethargy coming from? A teenager should have no problem getting up for a professional baseball game. But Rizzo’s energy supplies were tapped.

“I’m always high strung, always going,” said Rizzo, now the starting first baseman for the Salem Red Sox. “So when I’m in Greenville, with 5,000 people there, and I can’t get up for a game, I was thinking to myself, ‘what’s wrong with me?’ I’m not excited to play. I’m tired between innings.”

Rizzo talked to Greenville’s trainers and trainers he trusted back home in Florida. At first, doctors suspected some sort of kidney infection. The Red Sox flew Rizzo to Boston for more testing, and the diagnosis was more sinister than anyone had thought.

Rizzo was diagnosed with limited stage classical Hodgkin’s lymphoma, news that shocked Rizzo and his family, considering there was no family history of cancer.

Though Hodgkin’s lymphoma is one of the most curable forms of cancer, Rizzo was naturally shaken by the news. Away from home for the first time in his young life, he faced a life-changing crisis. But his parents were in Boston with him, and Rizzo found comfort in the support the Boston organization gave him. Rizzo got words of encouragement from Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester, who had battled through Hodgkin’s himself, and he drew inspiration from Lester’s career resurgence after the disease went into remission.

Rizzo’s action was as swift as the diagnosis.

“I found out about five days before I got my first dosage of chemotherapy,” Rizzo said. “Then I went back home to Miami to finish it up there.”

Meanwhile, Rizzo’s father traveled to South Carolina to grab Anthony’s belongings from his apartment. On his way back to Florida, Rizzo’s father stopped in Savannah, Ga., where the Drive was playing the Savannah Sand Gnats.

“He stopped and saw the game,” said Salem outfielder David Mailman, who was Rizzo’s teammate in each of the last two years in Greenville. “Rizzo was my first roommate in professional baseball, so I talked to (Rizzo’s dad) a little bit. He just reassured us and told us things were going to be all right. It was in God’s hands. All we could do was pray for him and hope for the best.”

The chemotherapy treatments continued for the next six months. Baseball workouts were out of the question. He just wasn’t strong enough physically. Rizzo lost weight and his appetite, because the chemo robbed him of his taste.

“Really, the only thing I could eat was my neighbor’s brownies and milkshakes,” Rizzo said. “That’s all that tasted good.”

Rizzo was batting .373 with six doubles and 11 RBIs in 83 at-bats before the diagnosis. He’d played baseball on nearly a daily basis for most of his life, so even he wondered how long it would take him to get back into a rhythm once he was cleared to resume baseball activities. His cancer went into remission in September, and he began working out again, putting on weight so he could participate in the Red Sox’s instructional league in Florida.

Many of his Greenville teammates were in the league. The moment they knew Rizzo was back in form? It wasn’t when Rizzo crushed a home run or roped a double into the corner.

“He was so fired up to play baseball again,” Mailman said. “The first day back, he tripped running around the bases. It was a real icebreaker for him to get back into it.”

Rizzo laughed. The energy was back. So, it seemed, was Rizzo.

The Red Sox were cautiously optimistic Rizzo would be able to replicate his hot start in 2008, so they started him again in Greenville. Rizzo batted .298 and was second on the team in doubles (21), home runs (nine) and RBIs (42). He earned a spot on the South Atlantic League All-Star team, and the Red Sox promoted him to Salem at mid-season, along with Fellow SAL All-Stars Mailman, Tim Federowicz and Armando Zerpa.

Since moving up, Rizzo is batting .265 with a home run and eight RBIs in 83 at-bats. A promising career, it seems, is right back on track.

“I never take a day for granted,” Rizzo said. “When I get tired, when you get into July and the days are long, I remind myself of what I went through. I never take a pitch for granted. I always have fun.”