Cancer will not win.
Not in the long run, and not at Coors Field on Monday night.
Get your ticket now for Monday’s game against the Atlanta Braves. Let’s make it a sold-out crowd that shouts from every seat in the building: Cancer will not win!
On Monday, Chad Bettis will take the mound at 20th and Blake for his first Major League start since winning two bouts with cancer dating back to November.
The team will also honor the late Don Baylor, Colorado’s first manager, who fought multiple myeloma valiantly for over a decade but ultimately succumbed last week.
Let’s pack Coors Field – all 50,398 seats – to celebrate Bettis’ victory and show that, despite claiming Baylor, the fight to defeat cancer once and for all will not end until we’ve won.
Bettis’ fight is now a familiar one. Since being diagnosed, Colorado’s winningest pitcher last season has been both vocal and visible throughout his fight. He penned a first-person account of his offseason battle for Mile High Sports Magazine. He posted pictures to Instagram during his chemotherapy treatment. He sat down with the team’s TV partner to share stories about his recovery. He shared smiles with cancer patients at Coors Field.
Throughout his battle, we’ve seen Bettis lose his hair but gain a daughter. We’ve watched teammates and people across baseball come together for Bettis, and we’ve seen Bettis himself stand up to cancer on behalf of others.
Regardless of what the scoreboard reads when Bettis leaves the mound on Monday, Bettis will have won.
And although he won’t be on the field when the team pays him tribute, Don Baylor can count himself a winner on Monday as well.
The average life expectancy for someone diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that attacks the plasma in bone marrow, is five years. The man known as “Groove” and who spent more than 45 years years in baseball fought it for more than a decade.
During that time, Baylor continued to coach in the big leagues, including two seasons (2009 and ’10) back in Colorado as the hitting coach. More importantly, he was leading the charge to raise $100 million to help build an information-sharing system for doctors to better share cancer treatment and research information. As of 2016, Baylor’s group (which included former Major Leaguer and multiple myeloma survivor Mel Stottlemyre) was ‘about halfway’ to it’s goal.
Help the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation reach that goal by donating here.
Baylor’s story may be less familiar. He was never the outspoken type, as former Rockies outfield Dante Bichette reminded us on the day of Baylor’s passing. So, it’s understandable that you might not have heard about Baylor’s fundraising efforts, or even that Baylor was battling cancer.
On Monday, you can make sure that the Baylor family and everyone in baseball is aware by packing Coors Field and making it rock and shake (as we know you can do) until the final out is recorded.
Do it for Chad Bettis. Do it for Don Baylor and his family. Do it for yourself and those in your life that have, are or will fight cancer.
I’ll be there to celebrate those I know who, like Bettis, have won their fight – Bob, Chad and Lisa.
I’ll be there to honor those I knew whose fight, like Baylor’s, will have to be waged in memory by those of us still here – Peter and Ethel.
And I’ll be there to encourage those who are still fighting – Marianne.
Bettis was among the lucky ones. (As lucky as one can be when diagnosed with cancer.) The 10-year survival rate for his particular form of cancer, seminoma, has a survival rate of greater than 95 percent and has since the 1970s.
Baylor, although he lived more than double the expected time for a multiple myeloma cancer diagnosis, was not. The five-year survival rate is just 49 percent. Baylor beat those odds, but now it’s up to us to help others beat it completely.
In five to 10 years, as some experts believe, or whenever we eventually crack the cancer code and it becomes fully treatable, we’ll all have won. Thanks to advances in genomic mapping, a future where cancer is at worst a chronic long-term disease may be nearer than we think.
Until that day arrives, it’s important to continue to celebrate those who have won their battles. To support those who are still fighting. And to fund the research necessary to end the fight once and for all.
Together, we can do a little bit of all of that on Monday. I’ll see you at Coors Field.
