Perspective

The homeruns are great. Pitching matchups are interesting and usually make for stellar competition. There are a million reasons why I love baseball and all that it has to offer, but last night was the prime example of how the emotion of sport can take hold of the common fan and suddenly turn a somewhat significant game in late July into the mark of a season, a career, a lifetime even.

Perspective is something that I have developed a vast appreciation for over the past 6 months to a year. I think I've been learning how to separate the menial from the immense and better understand that whole 'grand scheme of things'. Well, anyone who watched last night's game and knew what it meant to one 23 year-old pitcher and his family probably learned a little bit more about perspective and how abundantly different it can be from one person to the next.

It's not like cancer is this estranged disease that some of us have had some affiliation with or maybe a distant connection to. Every single person that I have known and will ever know has a connection to this sometimes fatal disease, and I feel confident in saying that the word 'cancer' is still a very scary utterance to anyone. I've never been diagnosed with any form of cancer, but I'm fairly certain that at some juncture in my life, I will hear that word spoken in my direction...whether I'm old and approaching death or a day over 29 and approaching my thirties, I will still be scared. If I had fulfilled my childhood dream of playing professional baseball and at the tender age of 22, I was diagnosed with the disease, i don't know what I would feel. I wish I could ask Jon Lester what sort of emotions he felt when he learned of his development of the disease.

Lester made it to the big club at just 22, and as a starting pitcher to boot. He had a baby face, a strong left arm and a competitive streak that most Sox fans could plainly see when he took the hill last season. He won some games, pitched remarkably well for a rookie that young and had us fans talking about the future of the rotation and how bright it might actually be. Things were probably somewhere in the general vicinity of perfect for Lester last summer, or at least I would have to imagine they were. Until late August.

The devastation from the level of a fan was immense and Sox fans everywhere felt it. It wasn't the same as Pedro getting hurt and being out for months. It wasn't JD Drew pulling a hamstring and being a question mark for some unknown length of time. It wasn't Trot going down for almost an entire season, creating a massive hole in our offense. It was a kid having cancer; a kid that represented a big part of the club's future. But it was cancer that sent the shockwaves through the Nation, not the imminent DL spot for Lester. It was the unknown of the initial diagnosis that had everyone guessing as to whether or not this young man might live to see 23...a little more serious than wondering if your starting leftfielder might be back in time for the playoffs. Overall, it was just really difficult to put into perspective from a fan's view because it was so unfair. It's Darryl Stingley and Travis Roy. And that's just the fan's point of view...my point of view.

I had wondered about the feelings of his parents, of his closest friends and of his own emotions as he went through this whole ordeal. I suppose that, after a fairly short or long period of time, he knew that the cancer was found in ample time to extract it all and label his self cancer-free. But I don't know if that can really be considered a comfort since you just never know if it might come back and take more of your life away from you. Then came the chemotherapy sessions that were surely painful and draining for him and his family, followed by that uphill battle to get back into some sort of shape that might allow him to return to pitching in the major leagues of baseball-something that is hard enough to do the first time WITHOUT having battled cancer. I now wonder a little less about those feelings that he and his family might have had or might be having now.

I watched last night's game and I don't know what I expected to see. Lester was one of my favorite young players well before he first pitched at Fenway, so I knew that he would give it his all and probably give us a solid start. He's a great competitor. What I didn't...or couldn't predict were the emotions portrayed by him and his family over the course of the game. From watching his mother rock back and forth in her seat, half the time cupping her hands over her eyes and the other half peering over those hands to watch him pitch, you could really feel her nervousness and relief and fear and all those things. In the fourth inning, he let Cleveland load the bases and after working out of some trouble to get to 2 outs, he faced Grady Sizemore. Sizemore took him deep two innings before. Lester had been all over the place with his pitches in that inning and it certainly didn't feel like he was in complete control, but when he got Sizemore to two strikes and ultimately blew a 93mph fastball by Sizemore's swinging bat, you could feel the relief of much more than a simple recorded out in a ballgame. Lester yelled and pumped his fist, his mother threw her hands up on top of her head and look skyward and the whole family section hugged each other. I thought it was quite a moment, but I can't begin to imagine how they felt. Or how they felt after the sixth when they knew he wouldn't return to the mound, or after the ninth when it was assured that he had become the winning pitcher for that night.

I know that the win in that ballgame didn't much matter to Jon or his family in the way that it used to. I appreciated the 'W' in the win column as much as everyone else, but I really appreciate the fact that Jon Lester is back in our rotation, as healthy as before but certainly a much different person than he ever was.