First and foremost, let’s be very clear how great it was to see Trey Mancini’s brief video postcard on social media thanking the fans for their support and telling us he hopes to see us soon. He then ended his post with “… stay safe and healthy.”
We’ll all anxiously await the news that comes out from the pathology report from the malignant tumor he had removed from his colon. There’s the rub. That will tell us whether the doctors think they have been able to remove all the cancer from his colon or whether the cancer has metastasized, compromising his liver, lungs or bones.
We are so used to athletes’ injuries being of a finite time. A meniscus tear can be 2-4 months. After Tommy John surgery, we now know a pitcher will most likely lose a season and a half. A broken hamate bone can be fixed and healed in 6-8 weeks.
Removal of a malignant tumor in the colon offers no such clear-cut return date. You wait for the pathology and you pray. Some cross their fingers. Some do both.
A guest on The Bat Around March 21 was talking about Mancini and his surgery in terms of not having to miss much time. But that point of view doesn’t jibe with a talk I had with a doctor friend of mine.
“Mancini won’t be playing any baseball this season,” he bluntly predicted.
He wasn’t saying Mancini will never play again. He was merely stating the harsh reality that Mancini’s battle will require some good fortune and then success in whichever treatment protocol his doctors decide upon.
The flip side of this story is that as the coronavirus pandemic escalates at breakneck speed, we went from a seemingly normal spring training to an announcement that the last two weeks of spring games were canceled and that the start of the 2020 season would be delayed by two weeks.
Less than a week later, we are getting word that this season may not start until around Memorial Day.
But all that talk in the past 36 hours was trumped by the news that in Italy 368 people died from the coronavirus March 15. What we are dealing with is changing by the minute.
I hate to be so negative, but at the end of the day I am seeing a scenario that may keep Trey Mancini from missing any games at all.
March Madness is gone. There won’t be a Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday in May. The NBA and NHL seasons are on the brink. The NFL Draft will still be held in Las Vegas, but there won’t be any events for the public to attend.
The new normal is creeping up very quickly now, and things we have taken for granted are evaporating before our very eyes. As these new markers arrive and disappear, they don’t seem quite so important after all.
Photo Credit: Kenya Allen/PressBox