Comeback Relief : Radinsky Helps Simi Valley, Perseveres During Hodgkin’s Disease Treatments

Since learning he has Hodgkin’s disease three months ago, Scott Radinsky has become accustomed to people fearing the worst. That’s why this date has been marked on his calendar for weeks.

The Chicago White Sox open a three-game series tonight against the Angels at Anaheim Stadium, and the relief pitcher is looking forward to seeing his teammates.

Or rather, having them see him.

Radinsky will be in uniform, appearing very much the same muscular 6-foot-3, 204-pound left-hander who won eight games and saved four last season. If club officials let him, he would like to pitch batting practice and shag balls in the outfield.

A mainstay in the White Sox bullpen the past four seasons, Radinsky, 26, is halfway through a scheduled series of 12 chemotherapy treatments and still looks fit enough to pitch out of a late-inning jam.

“I feel like I could go in tomorrow and get somebody out,” he said late last week. “I want people to know I haven’t had to stop doing anything.”

Radinsky’s illness forced him from Chicago’s active roster, but it failed to take him away from baseball.

The day after the White Sox sent him home to Simi Valley in February, Radinsky approached his old high school coach, Mike Scyphers.

“I said, ‘Looks like I’m going to be here for a while. Better get me a uniform,’ ” Radinsky said. “If I was going to be here, I wanted to be part of the team.”

He is, much to the delight of the Simi Valley High players, who refer to him as “Rad Man.”

“At first I felt sorry for the guy,” said Kary Kozlowski, one of the Pioneers’ pitchers. “Now look at him. Everybody I’m sure pictures him being skinny and bald and sick. That’s not the case at all.

“He’s an inspiration, that’s for sure.”

Apparently, he also is a knowledgeable pitching coach.

Simi Valley opens the playoffs on Friday after finishing the regular season with a record of 18-6 and having placed second in the Marmonte League. This, despite the suspension of Scyphers, pending an investigation into alleged financial and disciplinary improprieties; a pitching staff depleted by injuries and the absence of the staff ace, who was suspended from school.

“He’s helped us a ton,” pitcher Jeff Weaver said. “He teaches us that the game is more mental than physical. He’s always been there to help us out.”

On most days, Radinsky can be found at the high school field in long, baggy shorts, a T-shirt and a baseball cap pulled backward over his closely cropped dark hair.

At times he offers instruction. At other times he plays groundskeeper, painstakingly raking and meticulously packing dirt. He appears content.

“I feel like this is what I’m supposed to be doing this time of year,” he said. “What I’m doing and where I’m doing it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s baseball.”

Radinsky finds time to work on his pitching. He also plays in an adult league on most Sundays.

“I managed to find a spot on our team for him as a closer,” said Russ Stephans, the high school team’s interim coach and Radinsky’s manager on Sundays. “He’s out there having a blast.”

Radinsky also plays first base and claims one of the most prodigious home runs at the high school field; a drive over the right-field fence that cleared a greenbelt and track, and landed on the adjacent football field.

“They picked it up around the 50-yard line,” Radinsky said.

“It was a bomb,” Stephans said.

As a pitcher, Radinsky occasionally helps make a washed-up ballplayer’s day.

“The other day a guy looped the ball just over Rad’s glove and just between the infielders,” Stephans said. “The ball was barely hit hard enough to make in onto the outfield grass, but the guy’s over there on first base (yelling), ‘I got a hit off him! I got a hit off him!’ ”

To that gentleman and the few others who have managed hits comes this potentially ego-busting news: “I don’t really let it go,” Radinsky said. “I’m working mostly on changeups.”

Radinsky says his condition is similar to what it might be a week into spring training. If all goes according to plan, he will receive final chemotherapy treatments on Aug. 1. A month of radiation treatment is scheduled to follow.

Doctors told Radinsky that if he handled the chemotherapy well, the radiation should not be a problem. “And I’ve jogged through chemo,” he said, “so I expect to sprint through the radiation.”

Radinsky feels weak and nauseous during the 48 hours after his biweekly chemotherapy sessions, but other side effects have not materialized. Radinsky hides a full head of hair under his hat.

“My doctors are blown away,” Radinsky said. “I haven’t lost anything. I think by my last radiation treatment I can have myself at about 90% and within about a week be ready to pitch again in the big leagues.”

Radinsky probably would still be pitching for the White Sox had he not had a small lump under his neck checked by his personal physician in February, a few days before reporting to spring training.

Chest X-rays revealed what the doctor thought might be Hodgkin’s, but Radinsky wasn’t experiencing any other symptoms: chills, coughing, shortness of breath.

Only after he reported to the White Sox training base in Sarasota, Fla., was the diagnosis confirmed by a team of specialists. “I was there three days and they sent me home,” Radinsky said. “Never even made it out to the park.”

The seriousness of his illness never fazed him, despite family history. Radinsky’s father, Marshall, died of lung cancer in 1985.

“As far as worrying about it, I probably didn’t because the word cancer was never put in there,” Radinsky said. “My dad had lung cancer. I had Hodgkin’s disease.

“I watched my dad smoke all my life. That was something he inflicted upon himself and something anybody who smokes inflicts on themselves.”

Radinsky was a junior at Simi Valley High when his father died. He was a baseball player, but not much of a pitcher at the time.

But then, as now, the game became his salvation. “My 11th-grade season pretty much saved my life,” Radinsky said. “Through all the hell and bad times I went through, I put every single bit of energy I had into this game.

“Baseball kept me in school. It kept me from doing something stupid. You’re 16, 17 years old and your father passes away and you’re at the most important time in your life. Baseball gave me an outlet, gave me a release. It meant more then than it ever did.”

Radinsky recalls feeling closest to his father on the baseball field.

“It’s kind of weird or corny to say, but there were lots of times when I was still missing my dad heavy that being out there was like being with him,” Radinsky said. “It was like I was there with him and for him. Doing it for myself, but also knowing that it was what he would want me to do.”

Radinsky’s dedication paid big dividends. As a senior, he was 14-1 with 180 strikeouts in 100 innings. The White Sox made him a third-round pick in the 1986 draft, and despite missing almost the entire 1988 season because of shoulder surgery, he was a full-time member of the club’s bullpen by 1990.

Last season, Radinsky was 8-2 with four saves as a setup man for closer Roberto Hernandez. He has 31 saves in his career, including a high of 15 in 1992.

Radinsky expected even better numbers this year for a team that figures to contend. Now, he would settle for a late-season call-up and a chance to retire a batter or two.

“That would be my only goal,” Radinsky said. “If I could get into a game that would be cool, even if it’s just to face a couple of hitters.”