Get Well, Papi!
By Josh Resnek
My wife and I have a dear friend who has been fighting uterine cancer for the past five years.
Five years ago, when it was first discovered, it almost did her in.
This is a vibrant 63 year old mother and school teacher. She is tri- lingual. She teaches in the Lynn School system at Lynn English High School.
From the start, she fought the death sentence with a passion.
Five years later, she is still fighting.
No matter how good the folks are at MHG in Boston, the uterine cancer she carries can never be erased. It can only be controlled.
Fast forward to last week.
Our dear friend’s numbers were up, meaning the cancer had grown more active again.
An intervention was needed.
My wife drove her into Boston for a round of chemo treatments at MGH. Everything went well. Her numbers have dropped dramatically. She is readying right now for a trip to Europe with her daughter, who happens to be my daughter’s best friend and a student at University of Southern California.
“After my chemo treatments you won’t believe who I ran into on my recovery ward?” she told us when we visited the next day.
“David Ortiz!”
Right.
Big Papi remains at the MGH.
“How did he look?” we asked our friend.
“Horrible,” she said shaking her head.
“He’s grown a full long beard. He’s lost a ton of weight. He walked past me a few times with his head down with several catheters coming out of his nose and behind his back,” she told us.
Think about that.
Big Papi was shot in the back in his native Dominican Republic last month at a local bar and restaurant while sipping a drink. He was bothering no one. He was enjoying himself, his retirement, his status, his place in life following an illustrious professional baseball career with the Red Sox.
Now, because of an insane plot by a gang of savages, he is reduced to hospital status in the prime of his life.
We feel for Big Papi.
He was great entertainment.
This is a time he could use some prayers. He’s got a difficult road in front of him.
Suffolk Downs a Thing of the Past
The final, ultimate, painful, ironic, long time coming closure of Suffolk Downs last week put the final nail into the Massachusetts horse racing coffin.
Eight years ago, when casino gaming was struggling to find a place, the owners over at Suffolk Downs had the green light to set up shop using the track as an entertainment add-on to secure the right to place a casino there.
The idea was simplistic.
A horse racing track where gaming had existed for 50 years, morphing into an entertainment center with a casino and hotel on a sprawling property connected by rapid transit.
I was always a Suffolk Downs supporter.
These were good people interested in the Revere and East Boston communities…and Everett was very far away, somewhere in another realm.
Fast forward to last week.
The end came for Suffolk Downs on a sunny day with thousands of fans having a great time watching the races.
How ironic that not just Suffolk Downs has now closed, but that the entire industry appears to be on life support.
I believe there will always be a Triple Crown with the great racing
events like the Kentucky Derby, The Preakness and the Belmont.
All over the nation there have been horse disasters with many horses dead at a variety of tracks where wagering has declined along with attendance and interest. The industry is flagging. Younger people don’t care about horse racing.
Suffolk Downs was a last hurrah.
The entire get-up – the track, the land, the transportation, the investment and some imagination would have made of it quite a gambling complex.
But for all it might have been, it would not have been the Encore Boston Harbor.