PASSION PROJECTS
Cubs players Anthony Rizzo and and Edwin Jackson give back by taking up causes that hit close to home
In 100 years on Chicago’s North Side, Wrigley Field has developed a reputation as “the friendly confines.” ◆ But Cubs Charities, the team’s foundation, makes sure those friendly vibes extend beyond the historic ballpark’s ivy- covered fences. With programs that promote baseball amo ong low- income children, provide scholarships to college- bound stu udents and send players into the community ( to name just a few) ), the nonprofit raises more than $2.4 million a year (on average since Oct. 2009) to support local people and organizations. ◆ A large port tion of that money comes from the annual Bricks and Ivy Ball, the fourth edition of which will be held April 23 at the Field Mu seum to celebrate the 100th birthday of Wrigley Field. Although the entire Cubs lineup contributes to the team’s charitable efforts, we’re shining a spotlight on the work of Anthony Rizzo and Edwin Jackson, two players who are pitching in by giving back to Chicago’s kids.
‘I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT CANCER WAS. I WAS 18, SO I THOUGHT I COULD DO WHATEVER I WANTED. I THOUGHT I WAS INVINCIBLE. AND THEN THAT HITS YOU.’ — ANTHONY RIZZO
Anthony Rizzo was devastated. In April 2008, Rizzo — who’s now the Chicago Cubs’ 6-foot-3, 240-pound first baseman — was an 18-year-old can’t-miss prospect destroying minor league pitchers. But his gleeful romp through the Boston Red Sox farm system came to an abrupt halt when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma.
“I didn’t know what cancer was,” says Rizzo, now 24. “I mean, I was 18, so I thought I could do whatever I wanted. I thought I was invincible. And then that hits you.”
Rizzo underwent six months of chemotherapy before he was declared cancer-free, and he returned to the diamond the next season. With his grandmother fighting breast cancer at the time of his diagnosis, Rizzo immediately began working with family members on the concept of an organization that would someday support children and families battling cancer.
In 2012, that idea became the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation. Rizzo’s mother, Laurie, was with him at the time of his diagnosis and serves as the foundation’s president. “The Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation is important because when I was sick, I always say, I didn’t just go through my sickness,” Rizzo says. “So did my entire family, and so did my friends.”
More than five years cancer-free, Rizzo has no problem looking back. He recalls fighting against feeling victimized after his diagnosis — “I really didn’t want a lot of pity,” he says, “I didn’t want to be known as a cancer patient” — and how little both he and his friends knew about cancer. “A lot of my friends didn’t know [if they were] allowed to be around me,” Rizzo says. “[ We wondered,] ‘Am I contagious?’”
Now, Rizzo’s stronger than ever, and he calls on that strength to connect with patients and their families. After the Red Sox traded Rizzo to the San Diego Padres in 2010, he met a sick young boy and immediately bonded with him. The boy is around 11 now and in remission, but he and Rizzo still exchange the occasional text. And when people reach out to Rizzo about high school-aged patients, he makes himself a resource. “If they ever have a question I just have them text me whenever they want,” he says.
Rizzo tries to make monthly visits to the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital to visit with patients and their families. Sometimes, just being a young baseball star is enough. Other times, it helps to let the families know that the towering, square-jawed slugger before them was once in a similar position. “Every family, every case is very different,” Rizzo says. “It gives them hope that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and gives them a sense of comfort, I hope, that someone else has been through it.”
Now in his third season with the Cubs, Rizzo is looking to improve on a 2013 campaign in which he set a career high in home runs with 23 but saw his batting average dip to .233. The Cubs went 66-96 last year, but Rizzo says he expects the team to compete for a playoff spot under first-year manager Rick Renteria.“The last two years have been a little bit different,” Rizzo says. “But we’ve got some guys who are going to be here to stay for a while for sure. … I think we’re ready to compete at the highest level and make the playoffs.”
That would no doubt come as a thrill to Rizzo’s family and friends, who were there to help him through his lowest moments five years ago. “I think it was everything,” Rizzo says of his support system. “Once the doctors explained everything to us, it was like, ‘Alright, let’s just do this and get this over with and we’ll be done with it.’ And we are done with it now, and now we have a chance to help a lot of people.”
For more information, visit Rizzo44.com.
‘THEY’RE GOING TO LOOK AT ME DIFFERENTLY THAN THEY LOOK AT THEIR PARENTS. AND WE COULD BE TELLING THEM THE SAME MESSAGE. BUT THEY’LL LISTEN TO SOMEONE WHO HAS EXPERIENCED SOME OF THE SAME THINGS THEY HAVE.’ — EDWIN JACKSON
In some ways, Edwin Jackson has been training to be a professional baseball player all his life.
The son of an Army cook, Jackson never stayed put for long as a kid. He was born in Neu-Ulm, Germany, where he lived for a year before his family relocated to Louisiana. When he turned 6, it was back to Germany for two years until his clan finally settled in Columbus, Ga., when he was 8.
Not a bad dry run for life as a nomadic right-handed pitcher. When Jackson signed a four-year deal with the Chicago Cubs last January, it marked his eighth team since he broke into the major leagues 10 years earlier: He started with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2003 and since then, he’s made stops in Tampa Bay, Detroit, Arizona, Chicago (with the White Sox), St. Louis and Washington. “It was a lot of moving around,” the 30-yearold Jackson says of his childhood. “Baseball’s been kind of the same way. I’ve bounced around a little bit, so I kind of say maybe it was predestined.”
Being both a self-described “military brat” and an African-American baseball player gives Jackson a unique perspective on life, one that led him to launch the T.H.R.O.W. Foundation in 2011 (T.H.R.O.W. stands for Talent & Heroes: Remember Opportunities Work). The foundation introduces young African-American males — primarily from inner-city Atlanta and Chicago — to baseball, with a special focus on assisting children with parents deployed by the military.
Jackson particularly loves getting out in the community and welcoming kids to Wrigley Field. Last season, he hosted three “Edwin’s Entourage” events, inviting two baseball teams and a group of children with active-duty parents to Cubs games before the gates opened. There, the kids watched Cubs batting practice and listened to Jackson dole out advice on coping with military life and turning negative feelings into competitive advantages on the field. “I’m a big believer [that] you can give all the donations you want … but when [kids] actually see you in person right there talking to them, I think it touches them in a different way,” Jackson says. “They’re going to look at me differently than they look at their parents. And we could be telling them the same message. But they’ll listen to someone who has been through the same lifestyle as them or experienced some of the same things they have.”
On a personal level, Jackson looks at all of those experiences as positives. After all, the military has given him much more than just a well-worn passport: Take, for example, his trip to Montgomery, Ala., when he was 20. Jackson was in town to visit family, but he met a young airman named Erika Zanders, stationed at the nearby Maxwell Air Force Base. Though Zanders was on active duty, the two stayed in touch, and when she returned to civilian life in 2011, they fell in love. The couple married last year. “We’ve known each other a long time, to say the least,” Jackson says with a laugh.
In that time, he’s become a polished baseball veteran with a presence that can energize a room and a sense of humor built to entertain everyone in it. He’s learned to be comfortable in almost any situation, capable of lounging around in sweatpants, a T-shirt and sneakers one minute and going into the closet to “flip the switch” with a tailored suit the next. It’s a lesson he says he picked up from his past. “You definitely have to make major adjustments to your life and you have to be able to adapt to different things,” Jackson says of the military lifestyle. “You’re not necessarily always in comfortable situations or comfortable surroundings.”
Jackson’s making similar adjustments to find his comfort zone on the field — he says he’s trying to rebound in his second season with the Cubs after posting a 4.98 ERA in 31 games a year ago. And he predicts that this year’s group will contend for a playoff spot. “We expect to win,” Jackson says. “It’s just a matter of us having that attitude and, you know, when we take the field, take it with swag and the belief that we can beat anybody we play.”
For more information, visit Cubscharities.com.