Boston Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy was honored for his three decades in the broadcast booth at Fenway Park in 2017. Remy recently has resumed cancer treatments. Steven Senne/Associated Press
In a pandemic, any step towards normal feels like a victory.
So last week, when Boston Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy said he was resuming his cancer treatment, we celebrated.
Remy’s battles with cancer — six of them, to be exact — have been public news since he was first diagnosed with the disease in 2008. He has kept fans updated with his progress and his setbacks, often posting updates on social media from his hospital bed. When he battled depression after his first diagnoses, he shared that, too.
His return to Mass General Hospital last week was noteworthy on a couple of fronts. First, Remy was sitting in a room outside his home for the first time since he returned from spring training and entered quarantine. His daily routine has included drives around town but he has been steadfast about isolating at home. With his compromised health condition, he has had to be.
It was also important because it meant Mass General was handling the surge of COVID-19 patents well enough to start addressing non-coronavirus issues once again.
“That’s terrific because they were canceled for a couple of sessions because of what’s going on,” Remy said last week in a NESN podcast we host together. “So now they think the hospital is safe enough to go into. They moved the location to a different part of the hospital.
“I only missed two, so that’s not too bad. I expected to miss more.”
The treatments are ongoing for Remy, part of a new course of immunotherapy he began last year. It has proved to be successful as Remy has been able to return to the broadcast booth and continue his role as one of New England’s most beloved television personalities.
Remy was originally skeptical of the possibility of baseball returning to empty stadiums this summer, saying he didn’t think the sport would be able to get back on its feet in time to salvage some sort of 2020 season.
His opinion has changed. He told me he now believes the powers that be now want the game back more than ever, and bringing the sport back to televisions around the country — even if played in ballparks without fans — is an important step in helping all of us get back on our feet.
And those steps will be vital as our stay-at-home resolutions drag on towards summer. The baseball season would be over a month old now, and the Red Sox were one of several teams announcing refunds for all April and May tickets purchased. That’s a concrete sign that some of these games will be lost forever. We’ve known that for a while now, but it was still somewhat startling.
We are craving normal routines more than ever, and for many of us baseball has been part of our summer nights throughout our lives. While the sport may have lost some of its luster for younger fans, the security of a ballgame being played in the background has become a luxury we now miss.
The RemDawg has been part of the soundtrack of that routine for decades. He can’t wait until he’s able to once again sit high above Fenway Park and say, “Buenos noches, amigos,” just before the first pitch of the game. That’s when we know things will be back to normal.
For now he, and we, will have to settle for small steps towards that day. For Remy, the latest step in that journey was simply being able to get back into the hospital to resume treatments for cancer.
Tom Caron is a studio host for Red Sox broadcasts on NESN.
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