Keeping perspective important Red Sox health issues show athletes’ frailty

I couldn’t help thinking about Tony Conigliaro and Harry Agganis the other night when news came from Boston that Red Sox DH and star extraordinaire David Ortiz was wearing a heart monitor as doctors tried to get a true handle on his recurring heart rhythm maladies.

But the news of Sox rookie pitcher Jon Lester was more disturbing. Lester, who had been plagued with back difficulties for some time, was diagnosed with large cell lymphoma, a form of cancer indigenous to young people.

Oh, my. In a year chock full of one malady or another, could there be anything that strikes fear into the hearts of family, fans, and friends more than the news of heart difficulties or cancer?

If Murphy’s Law has applied to this year’s version of the Old Towne team, then Ortiz’s and Lester’s conditions have certainly added, if you will, insult to proverbial injury.

For the Ortiz and Lester families, however, the fears and concerns go deeper than the time frame for these athletes to return to the lineup.

Thoughts turned immediately to Conigliaro, who was beaned in 1967 and spent a full year out of baseball.

Conigliaro was a bit of a folk hero in Boston, and when he went down that August night at home plate, all New England stood still.

My friend David and I skipped school on a cool April day in 1969 to witness Tony’s comeback attempt against pitcher Dave McNally and the Baltimore Orioles. All of Red Sox Nation – we didn’t call ourselves that back then – was poised to see No. 25 back in the Red Sox lineup.

All Tony C. did that day was get the winning hit, and we were all in great hopes that his career was back on track.

However, Conigliaro was never the same player he had been before the beaning. The shot to the face robbed him of his crystal-clear vision, and he struggled for several years before retiring.

Agganis, another potential Red Sox superstar, died in 1955 at age 26 from a pulmonary embolism. What a player he had been. The Golden Greek, as he was called, never had the opportunity to pursue stardom. He died too young, too talented, never reaching the goals he had set for himself.

All this talk brings me to the thesis of this week’s column, for far too often we fans put these young men – our heroes – on such pedestals that we all lose perspective on just how human these stars really are.

Oh, make no mistake about it: We understand perspective relative to pulled muscles and the like by all these professional players. What we don’t comprehend enough is how frail their own human bodies are relative to more serious medical conditions such as heart disease and cancer.

We forget our own sense and fear of mortality by crawling into the bodies of these big, strapping giants, becoming awash in their seeming immortality.

Recent news out of Boston has shown just how mortal these great athletes really are.

30-Second Time Out

Watching current Bangor High School football coach Mark Hackett pacing the sidelines the other night at Cameron Stadium, I couldn’t help thinking about something the likeable gridiron boss said to me at the banquet honoring retired BHS football coach Gerry Hodge.

“I never realized how special this sport was to so many people until I saw all the former greats gathered here,” he said.

Hackett, an Orono High three-sport standout, learned that night about a different kind of perspective.

Mark will someday join those likes of Cy Perkins, Gerry Hodge, Steve Vanidestine, and Gabby Price in a coaching group that represented the Ram football fortunes professionally on and off the field.

He’s truly a class act.

BDN columnist Ron Brown, a retired high school basketball coach, can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net