The disease robbed him of a dream. But it happened so quickly, and so unequivocally, that it took weeks to fully process it. One moment, he was in his native Dominican Republic, a minor-league pitcher for the Mets. The next, he was on a plane to New York, a 20-year-old patient seeking treatment for a rare form of bone cancer. His baseball career was over barely a year after it had begun. Now, he was in a foreign land, facing complex surgery to save his life.



So within this darkness, it brought him comfort when a visitor arrived with a message of hope. The man had walked this same road before, and though he didn’t know it at the time, he would soon be forced to walk it again. He didn’t need directions to the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. “I had some experience there,” said the man, who would return for more visits.



“It really made me happy that he really cared,” said the former pitcher, Luis Vasquez, who has since returned...