Perspective

I could be writing about the horrible sweep by the Yankees or that the Red Sox for a moment even lost the lead in the wild card standings.

I could write about the torn feelings of admiring Smoltz pitching a gem in a Cardinals outfit while I reminisce about his 8+ ERA for the Red Sox.

I could follow up on my short and impulsive posts about the recent beaning frenzy, especially after the Porcello-Youkilis fracas.

Or I could write about the complete disbelief that follows watching Usain Bolt run any sprint distance. (Please God, make him be clean. I would stop watching athletics forever if it turns out he's juiced too.).

Ultimately though, money aside, those are all....well, games. Whilst in many cases it feels like life or death, it's not.

For Greg Montalbano(above, picture by Boston Globe) baseball went from being the more or less sole focus of his life and the dream to one day pitch in the Majors for his beloved Red Sox to something much less important. As a freshman at Northeastern University, where Montalbano had enrolled after pitching for St John's High in Shrewsbury, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1996, but battled through his illness, and in his last two years at NU was voted on to the All-American team. With the Red Sox A affiliate in Sarasota, he proved the Red Sox right for picking him in the 5th round of the '99 draft by tearing through the minor league levels.

Unfortunately, tumors were constantly tearing through his body too. He in the end lost count on how many times he'd had surgery to remove benign and malign tumors, at least 16 or 17 times in ten years.

After shoulder problems prevented him from taking the step up to Triple A in 2002, a combination of arm problems and yet another bout of tumor removal made him lose almost 2 years of baseball, although he did team up with another well known left handed cancer survivor

in the Red Sox Gulf Coast team in 2004; Jon Lester.

When he finally got a reprieve and became healthy in 2005, the Red Sox released him after spring training. As horrible as that is to write (and read), we all know, as did Greg, that baseball is a business, and after 5 years the Red Sox had to go down another route.

Greg took another path too. Now back to full strength, he dominated, nay crushed, the opposition in the Can Am Independent League, at one point going 35 1/2 innings without giving up a run in July 2006, posting an 0.86 ERA that had the major league scouts calling once again.

Sadly, this is not a Hollywood movie where a Tom Berenger on his last knees gets a final chance in the show and makes the most of it. On his way to the stadium for his scheduled start, Greg got the call he feared the most; the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute telling him his cancer had returned....again.

"I am a tumor machine," he says. "I make tumors. I have no idea why."

An great article by Stan Grossfield in the Boston Globe in October 2008 highlighted Greg's personal fight for me, and I've been following him on the net since.

Greg left baseball to focus on the next step of his life, using his engineering degree from NU and working incessantly for the Jimmy Fund, raising awareness and money for cancer research and treatment.

Even a sterile medium as the internet was able to portray Greg to me, and no doubt to other readers, as a truly great person. The kind that we see too rarely in life, but when we do they leave a permanent mark.

Often death "sanitises" the picture of a person, making him seem better, nicer and friendlier than he or she might actually have been in real life. However, in Greg's case, without ever having the privilige of meeting him, I don't doubt for a second that he truly was as good a person as the testimonials portray him to be.

The cancer took its final toll on Greg on August 23rd 2009, 13 years after his first diagnosis, but I suspect Greg still managed to leave this world a winner.

Greg lived every single moment and accomplished more in his 32 years than most do in their entire life.

His sister Kristen described Greg as a person who never allowed his incredibly persistent illness to get the better of him emotionally.

Hopefully our donations to the Jimmy Fund can some day allow another person beat cancer and take the field at Fenway.

Greg Montalbano was laid to rest the day after what would have been his 32nd birthday, accompanied by more than 1400 people at his wake and a standing room only 400 at the ceremony. I'll leave the final words of this post to his sister Kristen.

"Happy birthday, Greg. Your life was far too short, but you pitched a perfect game."