CLEVELAND (AP) — Nic Enright thought he would be caught up in the emotions of finally making it to the majors this past weekend.
Compared to everything he has dealt with the past three years since being diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, the 28-year-old Cleveland Guardians right-hander was able to take everything in stride.
Enright threw two scoreless innings and struck out three for Cleveland on Sunday in a 5-0 loss to Detroit. He was called up on Saturday after Hunter Gaddis was placed on the bereavement list.
“I remember feeling calmer and much more at peace than I thought I would,” Enright said Monday before the Guardians' 7-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“After I finished warming up and when I jogged in, we stopped for a minute to play ‘God Bless America.’” he added. "I used that time to just kind of think of everything that had gone on these last couple of years, all the obstacles that I’ve been through, everything that I and my parents have overcome. And then when the song finished, I was like, ‘All right, let’s go play baseball.’"
Enright received his cancer diagnosis in December 2022 after experiencing tightness in his neck. He was surprised about the diagnosis before going through some of the symptoms — such as getting itchy at night, experiencing night sweats and eczema on his elbow — and discovering he had all of them.
Enright has been undergoing treatments before and after each season, including four rounds of immunotherapy at the end of last season. He will have four more rounds of immunotherapy at the end of this season.
Cleveland selected Enright in the 20th round of the 2019 amateur draft out of Virginia Tech. The Miami Marlins took him in the Rule 5 draft two weeks before his cancer diagnosis in 2022.
“There were some dark days, and that’s when I leaned on all those people around me,” he said. “The biggest thing was not letting cancer control me and not letting it dictate how I was going to live my life."
Enright returned to the Guardians organization in 2023. He missed most of last season due to a right shoulder strain, but went 2-1 with a 1.06 ERA in 16 appearances with Triple-A Columbus.
He missed the first three weeks of this season due to a lat muscle injury. When Enright returned, he allowed only two earned runs in nine innings with one save in nine appearances with Columbus.
Enright made the majors after a 17-11 record and 3.13 ERA in 156 minor league games, including two starts. He is wearing No. 59 with Cleveland, the same number worn by Carlos Carrasco for 12 seasons. Carrasco was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia in 2019 and returned to pitch for Cleveland later that season.
Coincidentally, Enright's big league debut came in Detroit when the Tigers were hosting Strikeout Cancer Weekend.
“You can’t draw it up. It’s just one of those cool things,” manager Stephen Vogt said. “Just to see all that he’s persevered through different organizations, coming back to Cleveland and getting to make his major league debut with the Guardians. It was a really special day for Nic and his family and really fortunate we were there to watch it.”
Enright said he has received plenty of text messages the past couple days, but one of the more meaningful ones came from Boston's Liam Hendriks, who recently returned to the majors for the first time in two years after battling non-Hodgkin lymphoma and recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Even though Enright has reached a couple of significant milestones, he doesn't want his story to end with what happened Sunday.
“I’m super happy with how yesterday went, but the goal isn’t to just debut,” he said. “The goal is to come up here, take the ball every time my name is called and do everything I can to help this team win games.”
___
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
Joe Reedy, The Associated Press
