The free agent period will start to heat up soon, and Jon Lester may be trading in Fenway for Wrigley. Lester would be reunited with Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Both men are cancer survivors, and will always be bound by that incredible occurrence.

Rizzo was grateful to Lester. They met shortly after Lester won the 2007 World Series for the Boston Red Sox. Rizzo had this to say about Lester:

The biggest thing he did for me was he just told me, “Hey, you’re gonna have chemo. When you’re going through it, you’re going to feel good at times, and you’re going to feel awful at times. When you feel good, go out and do things you normally would do. Don’t really worry about what the doctors say”…and that’s the message that I try to pass on too.

Lester’s Road to Recovery

Lester’s story has been told, but it deserves to be told again, at least briefly. Lester was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in the summer of 2006. The Boston Red Sox took care of Lester, sending him to Massachusetts General Hospital. By December of 2006, his tests came back clear, and Lester began rehabbing his life, and rehabbing for baseball.

The rest of the story is a magical fairy tale, involving a World Series run, and even clinching the game to win the 2007 World Series for the Boston Red Sox. Months later, Rizzo ran into Lester in the Red Sox dugout, and the two briefly discussed cancer, as Rizzo had been diagnosed with it after getting drafted by the Red Sox.

Both men fought, both men survived, and now both baseball players are thriving. If they thrive in the same city, it will be powerful. Luckily, it appears their dark days are behind them, and Jon Lester and Anthony Rizzo can, together, push themselves solely on the diamond if Lester chooses to sign with the Chicago Cubs.