Prognosis for anaplastic large cell lymphoma depends greatly upon the type. If it is cutaneous surgical excision is usually successful whereas lymph node involvement requires chemotherapy and/or radiation. Treatment induced remission is frequent and the good news is that the cellular genetic change is known, meaning that more directly targetted therapy can be expected in the coming years.
I'm sure we all wish him well. Expect to see him pitching next season.
I'm sure we all wish him well. Expect to see him pitching next season.
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/...s_game_ready_for_takeoff/srvc=home&position=0
Jon Lester is a flying ace
Lefty’s game ready for takeoff
By Redsox Beat Scott Lauber | Monday, March 28, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Boston Red Sox
FORT MYERS — When Jon Lester began following baseball as a kid in Tacoma, Wash., labels like “ace” and “workhorse” were commonly applied to Randy Johnson, then the Seattle Mariners’ most indispensable pitcher.
These days, fans across New England pin those words to Lester.
It’s an apt description. With all due respect to right-handers Josh Beckett and John Lackey, the oldest and most experienced members of the Red Sox [team stats]’ rotation, Lester has become the club’s best and most invaluable starter, maybe even the best in the American League. The fact that the 27-year-old was manager Terry Francona’s hands-down pick to start Opening Day against the Texas Rangers this Friday is more proof of that.
The big left-hander would sooner cut off his arm than admit it, mostly out of respect for his peers, but there really is little dispute.
Just consider: Over the past three seasons, Lester leads the league with 50 wins and joins Seattle’s Felix Hernandez, Detroit’s Justin Verlander, Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke, Chicago’s Mark Buehrle and Tampa Bay’s James Shields as the only AL pitchers to log back-to-back-to-back 200-inning seasons. His cutter ranks among the nastiest pitches in the game, and by now, he has emerged as a perennially popular preseason pick to win the Cy Young Award.
But here is perhaps Lester’s best quality: He humbly regards himself not as the Red Sox’ ace but rather as one-fifth of a potentially superb starting rotation. Lester is every bit as vital to the Red Sox as Johnson was to those Mariners teams he grew up watching. He just refuses to see himself that way.
“I think any kid or any person that’s not in a clubhouse views pitchers like (Johnson) as whatever the media says they are. Whatever that announcer that day says — ‘Randy’s the horse, he’s the ace, he’s the Opening Day guy’ — those were the names you put next to his,” Lester said yesterday after throwing five innings in a minor league intrasquad game that served as the final tuneup for his Opening Day start. “It’s an honor to get those names put behind my name, but at the same time if I start believing those names then I’m not doing my job.”
Lester simply prefers to pitch and leave the judgments to outsiders. Asked about being the leader of the pitching staff, he is unfailingly deferential to Beckett and Lackey. The notion of putting himself above the other starters makes him squirm. The Opening Day start? Could’ve gone to any of them, Lester insists.
But Francona didn’t have to think very long before picking his very best option. It will be Lester’s first Opening Day start, and it will feature far more pomp and circumstance than a sleepy intramural scrimmage on a back field at the Red Sox’ minor league complex. But Lester has started enough truly meaningful games, including the Game 4 clincher of the 2007 World Series, to be daunted by a season opener.
Lester is confident he will be ready, too. He allowed five runs (four earned) on nine hits and struck out four yesterday against an approximation of the Triple-A Pawtucket lineup. But he also threw 77 pitches and said he simulated enough real-game situations (pitching from the stretch, holding runners, overcoming an error in the field) to feel prepared to break camp.
As good as he has become, Lester hardly believes he’s a finished product. Jason Varitek agrees. After working with him yesterday at the minor league complex, the veteran catcher and Red Sox captain said Lester continues to evolve by developing his offspeed pitches and new ways to get hitters out.
Varitek likened Lester to Pedro Martinez, circa 1998, when the then-Sox ace went 19-7 with a 2.89 ERA. And just when it looked like Martinez had hit his peak, he gained better control over his curveball, went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and won the Cy Young Award in 1999, also at age 27.
Could Lester, a 19-game winner last season, follow a similar progression?
“I’d like to think so,” Varitek said. “Jonny still has some youth about him, and he’ll still probably go through some sort of configurations throughout the year where he has to work with himself and it’s not always that easy. But he’s made himself more and more diverse as a pitcher as he’s developed.
“He’s good. Just let him be good, and then we’ll let him turn great.”
Maybe then Lester will concede that he’s an ace, a workhorse, everything Randy Johnson was all those years in Seattle.
Don’t count on it.
“Looking at it now,” Lester said, “I don’t think I’m any more important than the other four guys in our rotation.”
It’ll just have to be up to us to keep saying it for him.
Jon Lester is a flying ace
Lefty’s game ready for takeoff
By Redsox Beat Scott Lauber | Monday, March 28, 2011 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Boston Red Sox
FORT MYERS — When Jon Lester began following baseball as a kid in Tacoma, Wash., labels like “ace” and “workhorse” were commonly applied to Randy Johnson, then the Seattle Mariners’ most indispensable pitcher.
These days, fans across New England pin those words to Lester.
It’s an apt description. With all due respect to right-handers Josh Beckett and John Lackey, the oldest and most experienced members of the Red Sox [team stats]’ rotation, Lester has become the club’s best and most invaluable starter, maybe even the best in the American League. The fact that the 27-year-old was manager Terry Francona’s hands-down pick to start Opening Day against the Texas Rangers this Friday is more proof of that.
The big left-hander would sooner cut off his arm than admit it, mostly out of respect for his peers, but there really is little dispute.
Just consider: Over the past three seasons, Lester leads the league with 50 wins and joins Seattle’s Felix Hernandez, Detroit’s Justin Verlander, Milwaukee’s Zack Greinke, Chicago’s Mark Buehrle and Tampa Bay’s James Shields as the only AL pitchers to log back-to-back-to-back 200-inning seasons. His cutter ranks among the nastiest pitches in the game, and by now, he has emerged as a perennially popular preseason pick to win the Cy Young Award.
But here is perhaps Lester’s best quality: He humbly regards himself not as the Red Sox’ ace but rather as one-fifth of a potentially superb starting rotation. Lester is every bit as vital to the Red Sox as Johnson was to those Mariners teams he grew up watching. He just refuses to see himself that way.
“I think any kid or any person that’s not in a clubhouse views pitchers like (Johnson) as whatever the media says they are. Whatever that announcer that day says — ‘Randy’s the horse, he’s the ace, he’s the Opening Day guy’ — those were the names you put next to his,” Lester said yesterday after throwing five innings in a minor league intrasquad game that served as the final tuneup for his Opening Day start. “It’s an honor to get those names put behind my name, but at the same time if I start believing those names then I’m not doing my job.”
Lester simply prefers to pitch and leave the judgments to outsiders. Asked about being the leader of the pitching staff, he is unfailingly deferential to Beckett and Lackey. The notion of putting himself above the other starters makes him squirm. The Opening Day start? Could’ve gone to any of them, Lester insists.
But Francona didn’t have to think very long before picking his very best option. It will be Lester’s first Opening Day start, and it will feature far more pomp and circumstance than a sleepy intramural scrimmage on a back field at the Red Sox’ minor league complex. But Lester has started enough truly meaningful games, including the Game 4 clincher of the 2007 World Series, to be daunted by a season opener.
Lester is confident he will be ready, too. He allowed five runs (four earned) on nine hits and struck out four yesterday against an approximation of the Triple-A Pawtucket lineup. But he also threw 77 pitches and said he simulated enough real-game situations (pitching from the stretch, holding runners, overcoming an error in the field) to feel prepared to break camp.
As good as he has become, Lester hardly believes he’s a finished product. Jason Varitek agrees. After working with him yesterday at the minor league complex, the veteran catcher and Red Sox captain said Lester continues to evolve by developing his offspeed pitches and new ways to get hitters out.
Varitek likened Lester to Pedro Martinez, circa 1998, when the then-Sox ace went 19-7 with a 2.89 ERA. And just when it looked like Martinez had hit his peak, he gained better control over his curveball, went 23-4 with a 2.07 ERA and won the Cy Young Award in 1999, also at age 27.
Could Lester, a 19-game winner last season, follow a similar progression?
“I’d like to think so,” Varitek said. “Jonny still has some youth about him, and he’ll still probably go through some sort of configurations throughout the year where he has to work with himself and it’s not always that easy. But he’s made himself more and more diverse as a pitcher as he’s developed.
“He’s good. Just let him be good, and then we’ll let him turn great.”
Maybe then Lester will concede that he’s an ace, a workhorse, everything Randy Johnson was all those years in Seattle.
Don’t count on it.
“Looking at it now,” Lester said, “I don’t think I’m any more important than the other four guys in our rotation.”
It’ll just have to be up to us to keep saying it for him.
