"On a May day in 2008, Anthony Rizzo walked out of a Boston hospital room with his diagnosis: Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Waiting for him were his parents and Jason McLeod, the Red Sox scouting director who had gone to extraordinary measures in drafting Rizzo.

"We were in the lobby, and his mom was crying," McLeod says. "Even then I remember Anthony told her, 'It's going to be OK, Mom.' It's like he was embarrassed.

"I kept thinking, this kid is only 18 years old. If I was 18, I would be bitter, like 'why me?' He had just gone through a month where he (hit for a high average at Class A) Greenville, and I thought he would be pissed off and mad at the world."