The Red Sox pitching coach had a two-inch tumor removed and might have cancer.
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) – Boston Red Sox pitching coach Tony Cloninger might have bladder cancer.
A doctor found a two-inch tumor in Cloninger’s bladder, and team physician Dr. Bill Morgan said a biopsy was performed Tuesday to determine if the tumor is cancerous. The results will not be available until Friday at the earliest.
“If anybody can defeat this stuff it’s Tony,” manager Grady Little said Wednesday. “He’s tougher than nails and that’s why it’s going to be so tough to hold him back.”
Cloninger, 62, joined the Red Sox during spring training last year after serving as a scout for the San Francisco Giants. He spent 15 years with the New York Yankees’ organization, where he was bullpen coach to four World Series championship teams, as well as a minor and major league pitching coach.
Cloninger pitched a dozen years in the major leagues for Milwaukee, Atlanta, Cincinnati and St. Louis, going 113-97 with a 4.07 ERA.
“When I talked to him, he wanted to talk about how the pitchers did in the game yesterday,” Little said. “I wanted to talk about how he’s doing.”
Players were stunned by the news. Pitcher Derek Lowe called it “devastating.”
“I don’t care – small, big, cancer is cancer,” said Lowe, who had a cancerous growth on his nose removed during the offseason. “He and I have a very special relationship.
Doctors had discovered trace amounts of blood in Cloninger’s urine during a physical before spring training. The blood became visible to the eye on Sunday, Morgan said. The next day a urologist discovered the tumor.
“Bladder cancer is generally one of the more treatable types of cancer,” said Morgan, adding that no other parts of his body appear to have been affected.
“The best case scenario is that he could be back within a week,” Morgan said.
Cloninger was not at Boston’s spring training facility on Wednesday.
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