"Mr. Padre" Tony Gwynn, the prolific-hitting Hall of Fame outfielder who spent his entire 20-year career with the Padres, has been diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland. He has had three procedures since 1997 to remove non-cancerous tumors to the largest salivary gland, but the latest operation last month discovered a malignant growth.
"They took out three lymph nodes and did all the tests and the results showed cancer in the parotid," Gwynn told the AP Friday.
T. Gwynn faces radiation and chemotherapy treatments. He says doctors have told him they feel they caught the cancer early and "there was not much of it there." The doctors told him that this is a slow-moving but aggressive form of cancer. "I'm going to be aggressive and not slow-moving in treating this", Gwynn said.
Gwynn said he thought the cancer was most likely related to his use of chewing tobacco throughout his career.
Came across this article that was very touching, very true and very well written. Just wanted to share it with you.
"Sports need dignitaries like Gwynn, whose achievements are not commensurate with his ability to tweet his latest sneaker deal. People like Gwynn help others without the backup of a PR machine, or use their kindness as an embellished form of foxhole prayer. Forgive the cliché, but he’s someone you want your daughter to date and your son to emulate.
Built like Ralph Kramden while he hit like Ted Williams, Gwynn crouched low in the batter’s box as if to hide his baby fat. But there was no baby in his bat. An All-Star 15 times, Gwynn might be the greatest hitter since Williams never to win a World Series title (with all due respect to Ernie Banks and the like).
He fit the montage of our pastime: a man who looked like a boy and swung like a savant, his high-pitch monotone reflecting someone who grew up just enough to make a living at playing a game. In reality, he was alarmingly articulate and studious before the convenience of computers.
In the epoch of Internet, ADD reportage when a story 12 hours old is too old, Tony Gwynn is a time portal for those of us straddling 40, when our knowledge of a player was limited to the back of his baseball card, often coated with the sugary dust of the pink gum that came with every pack.
While Brett Favre struts back to New York, the scene of some unseemly deeds on and off the turf, it would be easy to stomp a man whose self-absorption is so thorough he’d make Narcissus blush. It is a story that folks and fools like me would normally use for literary target practice. He’s not worth it. Gwynn is."Good luck, Mr. Padre, we will all be thinking of you.
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