Long Beach State Hall of Famer Rick Bryson `still here fighting'
When 78-year-old Rick Bryson walked to the mound at Long Beach State's historic Blair Field on Friday night, a lot of great memories flooded his mind.
He remembered playing a starring role on the 1964 baseball team that won the university's first conference championship — and became the first LBSU team to make the NCAA national tournament. He remembered being inducted into Long Beach State's Hall of Fame in two sports — baseball and football.
“Those were some of the best years of my life,” he had told me earlier. “I had many great teammates, and I made many lifelong friends during those years.”
As he made his way to the mound before 2,511 fans, he also was trying to concentrate on one thing: throwing a perfect strike, or at least making it the 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to the catcher on the fly and not bouncing the ball in the dirt.
He had been selected to throw out the ceremonial first pitch in the season opener for the Long Beach State Dirtbags, who beat the Wichita State Shockers 2-0.
But Bryson was also carrying something else to the mound, something that many people did not know about this former star athlete, who has also built Bryson Financial, based in Long Beach, into one of the most successful insurance and financial services companies in the nation.
Bryson walks off the field after throwing the ceremonial first pitch to current Dirtbags pitcher Josh Haley on Friday.
Bryson is a cancer survivor.
In fact, he has been battling cancer since he was 28 — when he was told he had stage 2 melanoma cancer.
He was not a student of cancer and had to ask his doctors, “What is a melanoma?” He was soon to find out how serious melanoma skin cancer was. In the past 50 years, Bryson said, he has had 10 melanoma surgeries, the most recent one being two weeks ago, when he got some bad news.
“The doctors flat told me, `We didn't get it all. You still have cancer in your system,' ” he said.
Doctors said they had removed 90% of the cancer, but 10% remained.
Besides the melanoma cancer, Bryson said, he also has successfully fought prostate and bladder cancer.
“I did a rough estimate of just how many actual days I have spent in true battle with this awful disease, and it totals well over 1,200 days of my life, including visits to
doctors and hospitals,” he said. “I know I have lost a total of nearly four years out of my last 50 years, fighting cancer directly to move on with my life.
“I know those 1,200 days are lost forever, and I can't have them back,” Bryson added. “Yet I remain a cancer survivor, and I'm still here fighting, as I have done for my last 50 years.”
Bryson is a strong survivor.
He has been an athlete his entire life. He started at an early age and played football for Poly High, which has also inducted him into its Football Hall of Fame. He has been a single-digit handicap golfer for more than 40 years. He played tennis at a competitive level. He skied, both on snow and in the water, at a high level. His daily workout routine, he said, is fierce, including running, swimming, yoga and Pilates.
Keep in mind that while Bryson was fighting cancer all these years, he was also starting and building a highly successful business. He also has been deeply involved in service to the community, including serving as president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Long Beach, and performing other philanthropic work.
“As much as I loved playing sports, it was never easy, but fighting
Long Beach State Hall of Famer Rick Bryson, center, is one of several players from the 1964baseball team appearing in a pregame ceremony at Blair Field in Long Beach on Friday.
cancer for 50 years has been much harder,” Bryson said. “I really don't know how much longer I will be here.”
What he did know, he said, was that he wants to give back ”to all my friends and family that have been with me every step of this battle, in particular my beautiful wife, Bree, and our four kids and nine grandchildren and another on the way.”
Bryson also said he wanted to share his history with cancer in hopes that it would inspire others to keep on fighting the disease.
It was these cancer memories, including his latest surgery, and the memories of his days as a student-athlete at Long Beach State that Bryson carried to the mound while gripping a Rawlings baseball for the first pitch.
In a pregame ceremony, a 26.5-foot tall, 50-footwide,
state-of-the-art video scoreboard, beyond the right-center field wall, had been introduced to the public. Atop the scoreboard was a sign reading, “Bryson Financial.”
Trent Bryson, Rick's son and CEO of Bryson Financial, said the company had donated $400,000 for the $870,120 scoreboard.
In a video on the scoreboard, Cal State Long Beach President Jane Close Conoley welcomed Dirtbags nation to “this new vision.”
On the field, several members of the 1964 championship team were introduced along with RickBryson, as were Gerry Wuesthoff and Rob Wuesthoff, the wife and son of that team's coach, the late Bob Wuesthoff. The 1964 players were Don Anderson, Roger Cannon, Dave Christenson, Jack Hoffman, Doug Meyer, Rich Ramirez,
Steve Ramirez and honorary coach John McConnell, who was the coach of the first Long Beach State baseball team in 1954 and who just turned 99 this month.
With all of the introductions done, it was time for Rick Bryson to take to the mound.
He peered down at his catcher, Dirtbags senior pitcher Josh Haley, wound up and let the ball go. In a perfect arc, the ball sped to the plate. Would it make it to Haley's glove without a bounce? Yes.
The ball hit the glove with a smacking noise.
“It was a strike, right over the middle of the plate,” said Haley, a pitcher who recorded the save Friday night.
Haley handed the ball back to Rick Bryson. Fans applauded. Bryson beamed.
He waved his arm as if to say, “Never a doubt.”
It was a great moment for him. Earlier, the competitor in him had said that he would be giving his all on the mound to throw a perfect pitch. What helped motivate him, Bryson said, was the philosophy with which he has lived all his life:
“Make every moment a great moment, for you never know who is measuring you for a greater position in life,” he said. “Who might be measuring me now? Those that don't know me. A greater being? Perhaps he has already measured me. I am not taking any chances, and a strike it will be.”