Yankees Mag: The Good in Mankind

It’s only 7 a.m., and the Florida sun has already turned Parkland into an outdoor sauna. But for Anthony Rizzo and so many of his family members and friends, there’s nothing that would keep them away from Pine Trails Park on this early December day.

Located a stone’s throw from the baseball field where Rizzo, the Yankees’ veteran first baseman, first honed his craft as a Little League star, the sprawling park features soccer fields, baseball diamonds, a football gridiron and even an amphitheater. On this special day, the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation is hosting its 12th Annual Walk-Off for Cancer 5K. In a town sadly associated with so much loss and heartache stemming from the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in which 17 people were killed, this day represents so much hope. More than 1,000 walkers will contribute to the $1.3 million raised before lunchtime. As in previous years, the money raised through the foundation’s biggest fundraiser will be used to support families affected by pediatric cancer.

When Rizzo and his wife, Emily, arrive at the park at 7:15 a.m., they quickly make their way down a cobblestone pathway, under the inflatable arch where the 5K walk will start a few hours later. Stopping at every one of the five tents that have been set up, the couple takes time to thank every person, from the volunteers at the registration area to the people representing each of the foundation’s corporate sponsors.

Rizzo also spends a few minutes with his parents and his older brother, John, before walking over to a step-and-repeat backdrop, set up near the start line and surrounded with balloons. If ever a job was a labor of love, for Rizzo and his entire family, this might be it.

***

Long before Rizzo became a Chicago folk hero for his role in bringing the Cubs and their long-suffering fan base their first championship in 108 years, he was a Boston Red Sox prospect. A sixth-round pick out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas in 2007, Rizzo had big dreams at 17 years old. But before any of his aspirations could even begin to take shape, he was dealt the type of adversity that was as shocking as it was devastating.

Rizzo was just a few games into his 2008 season with the Single-A Greenville Drive in South Carolina when he began to experience swelling in his ankles. Tests would soon reveal that he had Hodgkin lymphoma. Baseball was put on the back burner as Rizzo began several months of chemotherapy treatment, first in Boston and then in Miami.

Rizzo quickly learned just how difficult cancer could be on young patients -- and also on their families.

“When I was sick, I saw my family go through worse pain than what I was dealing with,” Rizzo says after posing for photos with several walkers. “Going through treatment wasn’t fun, but seeing what it did to my parents and to all of my loved ones, that was worse.”

Even during the most challenging times, Rizzo was optimistic, constantly thinking about life after cancer. But with the realization of just how devastating cancer was on family members of patients, Rizzo made a declaration to his mother that still makes her emotional.

“We were in Massachusetts General,” Laurie Rizzo says from a park bench near the starting line while fighting back tears. “He told me, ‘When I make it to the big leagues, I’m going to start a foundation to help other families going through cancer.’

“I feel like that was our way of getting through it. When Anthony brought that up, my exact words to him were, ‘You’re going to get better, and you’re going to be able to help people. I’m sure of it.’”

Rizzo went into remission a few months later, and those precious moments remain etched in his memory.

“I remember it clearly,” he says. “When I got diagnosed, I had the mindset of beating it and getting past it and then starting a foundation. Back then, the big thing was how (famed cyclist) Lance Armstrong did that. I wanted to do the exact same thing, and I did.”

Rizzo’s selfless thought process made his mother proud, but it didn’t surprise her.

“That’s the person he always was,” she says. “He always thought of other people, even when he was a little kid. I can remember when he went on a field trip in elementary school and used the money I gave him to buy a gift for a kid who was home sick that day. Anthony has been like that his whole life.”

There were other difficult moments during the time in which Anthony underwent treatment. In addition to his own diagnosis, Rizzo’s maternal grandmother was dealing with breast cancer at the same time and would pass away soon after.

“It was a lot,” says John Rizzo, who was a standout offensive lineman on Florida Atlantic University’s football team back then. “Trying to figure out who was going with Anthony and who was going with my grandmother to treatments and doctor’s appointments was challenging. It was all hands on deck for both of them. It was a process.

“They were both so strong. Anthony always asked us to treat him normally. He would tell us that he was going to be fine. We tried to keep as much of a positive attitude as possible. In an Italian family, that meant cooking as much food as we could. We had big pasta dinners on Sundays, just like we always had before.”

When reflecting on her son’s battle with cancer, Laurie is also mindful of all the help her family received, simply because of what Anthony did for a living.

“The Red Sox helped with everything,” she says. “We had the best doctors in the world because of them. We were at Mass General when he was initially diagnosed. The doctors there felt that it would be better for Anthony to be in his own home, so we came down to Sylvester Cancer Center in Miami. He had the best care there.

“I used to think about how people would get through this if they weren’t getting the help we got. How would parents get through this if they had to go be at work every day? It’s all so difficult. Getting up in the morning, even that was difficult.”

With a newfound perspective and an intense desire to help others he could suddenly relate to, Rizzo didn’t need any further motivation. It became his mission to start a foundation that would ultimately make life easier for families going through the horrors of cancer.

“That,” Laurie says, eyeing the hundreds of people who have come out to support the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation, “is why we do this.”

***

Rizzo made his big league debut in June 2011 with the San Diego Padres. He was traded to the Cubs after that season, and within the friendly confines of Wrigley Field, he soon cemented his place as a Major League star.

True to his word, Rizzo established his foundation in 2012. That offseason, the first baseman and his family worked diligently to put together the inaugural 5K walk in Parkland.

“We didn’t know what we were doing at first,” Laurie says. “But we learned. That first year, we borrowed tents and tables. We got donuts, bagels and coffee donated.”

Although the preparation for the foundation’s first fundraiser had some bumps along the way, it ended up netting more than expected.

“That first year, we had people showing up while we were still setting up,” John says. “We had a goal of raising $30,000 with the first event, and we ended up raising $100,000.”

Those proceeds provided the financial engine for programs that would give comfort and assistance to families around the country for years to come. One of the first major gifts that the foundation made was in 2014, when it donated $250,000 to Miami’s Sylvester Cancer Center. According to Rizzo, that money was used for cancer research. Not long after, the hospital named a waiting room after the foundation.

While Rizzo remains loyal to the medical center where he was treated in Miami, he also began a longstanding relationship with Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. During his nine and a half seasons with the Cubs, he made frequent visits to the hospital, spending several hours a month there with young cancer patients. Having gone through cancer treatments himself, Rizzo realized that being relatable was his most impactful attribute.

“I try to have empathy for what they are going through,” he says. “I try to have some humor with it, as well. I tell them that chemo is the worst; it [stinks]. But on days when they feel good, I encourage them to go out and be themselves. Be a kid, and do what you want to do. I tell them about the things I did when I was going through treatments. Obviously, I was restricted a little bit. You can’t be in the sun, but I still went to the beach and wore long sleeves and a hat and sat under an umbrella. If you like to work out, you can still do so. You can’t work out hard, but I still went to the gym and did a little bit. I also tell them that when you don’t feel good, when chemo or radiation kicks in, it’s good to find things that you can still enjoy, like video games or TV shows.”

For Emily Rizzo, the experience of watching her husband interact with children during hospital visits has left a lasting impact.

“It’s one of the most incredible things to witness,” she says. “You see the direct effect that Anthony has on these children. It’s not a doctor telling them that they are going to get better. A lot of times when a person is trying to comfort someone and they have no real idea about what they actual feel like or how the chemo will affect them, it’s really hard to believe that everything is going to be OK. When Anthony talks to a child about being nauseous during chemo, their reactions are completely different. They realize that Anthony gets it; he knows what it feels like. They can relate; they trust what he says more. Sometimes, it’s hard for those children to visualize that, one day, their whole life won’t be consumed with cancer. But Anthony is living proof that they can come out of it and succeed.”

As Rizzo and his family gained a further appreciation for the impact that those comforting conversations had on young patients and their families, they brainstormed how those efforts could be augmented. Rizzo contemplated how cancer patients could get an even higher level of counseling during their darkest times.

The foundation hired former Cubs employee Abby Suarez as executive director. After raising about $1 million through its first three years, the Walk-Off for Cancer walk in Parkland grew exponentially. To date, it has brought in more than $20 million.

That success allowed Rizzo to establish the Hope 44 program at the Lurie Children’s Hospital in 2017. The foundation’s $4 million commitment provided two child life specialists, professional counselors employed on a full-time basis to work with pediatric cancer patients and their families.

“Hope 44 is a fund that, for the rest of time, ensures that there will be child life specialists at Lurie,” says Rizzo, who wore No. 44 with the Cubs. “Their salaries are paid for by our foundation from a fund that is in an investment portfolio. It will leave a stamp on Lurie forever. There will always be child life specialists there to help children and families.”

The foundation also extended the Hope 44 initiative to two medical centers in Florida, bringing full-time child life specialists to Sylvester and to the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood. Rizzo’s $650,000 donation to Sylvester in 2017 brought one-on-one counseling to patients in the very place where he and his family dealt with the uncertainty of cancer.

“The child life specialists are so important,” Rizzo says. “It’s awful to say, but when families get diagnosed, they don’t really have a playbook. The child life specialists become their playbook. When you’re going through it for the first time as a family, you have no idea what to expect. Doctors speak doctor, their own language. So, when you have a child life specialist come in and tell them what their treatment is going to be like and what other people have gone through in order to get through those days, it helps a lot. Not that many hospitals have child life specialists, and I wish more could.”

“The child life specialists are go-to people,” Rizzo’s mother says. “It’s someone who can explain it to a child and their family in a way that can soften it. The goal there is to make it a little easier on them.”

***

In 2016, Rizzo enjoyed his finest hour on the diamond, winning a World Series championship with the Cubs. A year later, his work through the foundation helped earn him the 2017 Roberto Clemente Award. Regarded as Major League Baseball’s most prestigious individual honor, the award is given out every year to the player who best represents the game through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions on and off the field.

“When I found out, I was really emotional for everyone involved in the foundation and in my life,” Rizzo says. “Baseball is my passion. I want to be the best I can be on the field, but to be able to reach so many different people on a different level, I never overlook that.”

Rizzo’s passion to help others only got stronger after he received the Clemente Award. He began the Rizzo Series, which comprises special events in which children and families get a break from the rigors of cancer treatment. Whether the three-time All-Star is bringing a group of children to an arcade or to play laser tag or miniature golf, the Rizzo Series gives kids “the chance to be kids.”

“We are bringing them away from their reality and giving them a good time,” Rizzo says. “They are surrounded by other children who are going through the same thing they are dealing with, and they can just feel comfortable doing something fun.”

In addition to the foundation’s macro level programs, Rizzo and his team have provided thousands of financial grants to individual families, including 500 in 2023 worth an estimated $1.5 million.

As Rizzo is quick to point out when speaking about the grant program, more than 70 percent of families have to file for bankruptcy after a child is diagnosed with cancer. With that in mind, the grants -- which people can apply for on the foundation’s website, arizzofoundation.org -- are unique to the needs of specific families.

“There are a lot of families who struggle to pay their mortgage due to lost wages associated with taking time off from work to care for their child,” Emily Rizzo says. “That’s where we come in. Every family’s situation is different; they all have their own struggles because of what they are going through. We try to figure out what part of their life is causing them the most stress and not allowing them to put all of their attention toward their child. We want to take that off their plate and give them the ability to focus on their family.”

“We don’t care how much money a family makes,” Suarez says. “We want to know if cancer has affected their financial position. We want to know if a cancer diagnosis has caused a loss of income. Our goal is to say yes to every family that applies.”

Providing financial aid is certainly the most common way the grants are used, but there are other ways that the foundation offers support to families in need.

“We received a call from a family that was in New York City for their son’s surgery,” Suarez says. “They were from Chicago, and the surgery was set for a few days after Thanksgiving. The doctor would not allow their son to go back to Chicago for Thanksgiving. When they reached out to us for help, we wanted to make sure that the family would be together for Thanksgiving. Our hotel partner in New York City put them up in a gorgeous suite, and we flew all of the boy’s brothers and sisters in. He had surgery two days later, and his mother told me that having the opportunity for her son to be with his brothers and sisters changed his whole attitude. It gave him hope. It gave their family a nice memory of having Thanksgiving dinner together during a really difficult time.”

Since being traded to the Yankees during the summer of 2021, Rizzo has actively made positive contributions within the confines of the Big Apple, regularly hosting children and their families on the field at Yankee Stadium and making good use of the city’s seemingly limitless opportunities and resources.

“I’ve been lucky to have been in markets where I can really make a big impact,” he says. “In New York City, we have done an event at FAO Schwarz, where children are going on a crazy shopping spree for a few hours. Seeing the smiles on those kids’ faces has been a huge win.”

Last fall, the foundation partnered with the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in sponsoring a team of 27 runners in the New York City Marathon. Not only was the foundation involved in helping the hospital raise more than $164,000 earmarked to support children and their families during treatments, but Rizzo’s wife and sister-in-law also ran the marathon on behalf of the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation.

“It gave the run and the accomplishment a whole new meaning,” Emily says. “That day wasn’t just about crossing the finish line and being able to say that I ran a marathon. It was for all of those families and kids going through so much. It was to raise money for our family’s foundation to do what we seek to do. It became really personal.”

***

A little more than a month after Emily crossed the finish line in Central Park, Rizzo and his family are gathered on stage in Pine Trails Park’s amphitheater for a much less grueling endeavor. Hundreds of walkers -- most of them donning the same gray T-shirt that the Rizzos are wearing -- are gathered on the giant lawn in front of the stage.

Rizzo’s father, John, proudly and emphatically gets the program started.

“I want to welcome World Series champion, three-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove winner, Roberto Clemente Award recipient, Marvin Miller Man of the Year, New York Yankees first baseman, my boy, Anthony Rizzo.”

Rizzo then takes the microphone and thanks the crowd for their participation in helping so many families.

“It’s great to get this much support in Parkland, my hometown,” he says. “Everyone here is walking for a cause. When an individual goes through cancer and has people rally around them and their family, it speaks volumes about the good in mankind. That’s what you’re doing today.”

Rizzo also announces a new $900,000 pledge to Miami’s Sylvester Cancer Center, and after a few more speakers address the crowd, the first baseman leads the masses along the cobblestone pathway to the start line. Thousands of supporters make their way out of the park and onto the palm-tree-lined streets of Parkland, ultimately crossing the finish line where their journey began.

As the afternoon approaches, there is a festive atmosphere in the park. Some of the walkers are congregating in front of a giant portable pizza oven, where slices are quickly being doled out, while others are relaxing on shaded benches.

On this day, Parkland is filled with happiness, optimism. Hope.

“I’m so happy that we can do this,” Laurie Rizzo says as she finds Anthony amid a crowd of people eager to thank him for, well, everything. “I’m so happy that we can give families hope. If we didn’t have hope when Anthony was sick, we wouldn’t have gotten through it. Hope saved us. So, today is all about giving people hope.”

Alfred Santasiere III is the editor-in-chief of Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the May 2024 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.