Liam Hendriks isn’t the “why me?” sort.
So when he was diagnosed with stage 4 Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in December, he said, “Why not me?” and attacked it head on.
Five months later, Hendriks sat in a conference room at Guaranteed Rate Field, wearing a STRUCKOUT CANCER T-shirt, his bags packed for a minor league rehab assisgnment of four or five relief appearances. After that, he’ll be pitching for the White Sox again with a clean bill of health.
“It’s hard to put into words,” teammate Lucas Giolito said. “He’s our closer, one of the best in baseball, so having him back after a rough April, having him coming in and shutting doors in the ninth inning will be hugely important for us.”
The Sox, who took a 9-21 record without Hendriks into their game against the Twins an hour after Hendriks spoke publicly for the first time about his battle, desperately need Hendriks, a two-time American League Reliever of the Year.
What everyone needs is an injection of inspiration Hendriks oozed in matter-of-factly discussing his illness and overcoming it.
“I never looked at it as a ‘why me thing?’” Hendriks said. “I looked at as ‘why not me?’ I tend to have a more rosy perspective on life than gen pop, so that was my process behind it. ‘I’ve got this. This is my next challenge.’”
“I’ve never really had a ‘life is short’ or anything like that. But since my career turned around in 2018, 2019, I haven’t changed my mindset. It’s always been a positive next day is what we are going to do. It’s never been a look to the future. It’s been taking care of today. That was a contributing factor that really helped me attack everything with this.”
Hendriks has been throwing bullpens with velocity levels in the 90s, so the expectation is that he can be at or near the levels of performance he has demonstrated in the past. How he recovers from outings, especially early on, will be monitored.
“I don’t plan on regressing,” Hendriks said. “If I go out there up (and give up) a hit, I’m still going to be pissed.”
Hendriks noticed lumps in his neck in June, and said the growths in his hips were larger. He believes he may have pitched all last season with lymphoma.
“What he went through, how he went through it,” manager Pedro Grifol said. “Not only did he fight through cancer, he still prepared for this through cancer. Which is really incredible. Most people when they are diagnosed with that, that is all they can concentrate on, right? That’s all they think about. And not only did he concentrate on that and battle through that, but he still worked at this, which is allowing him to speed that up a little bit now and be here and go through this rehab and hopefully come back here pretty soon. He lifts us all up. He’s an inspiration to us all. And just the way he went about it is just incredible.”