MLB Star Trey Mancini Has Stage 3 Colon Cancer: ‘It Could Happen to Anybody’

Baltimore Orioles star Trey Mancini was recently diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, and has begun six months of chemotherapy, he announced on Tuesday.

The 28-year-old baseball player announced the news in an essay published in The Players’ Tribune, and said he’d had a malignant tumor removed from his colon on March 12.

Mancini wrote that he first noticed something was wrong during spring training, when he felt himself growing tired after just a few swings during batting practice.

Routine physicals and blood work with Orioles team doctors found that he had low iron levels — and when a second blood test showed even lower levels, doctors thought he had either celiac disease or a stomach ulcer.

“Colon cancer was a remote possibility, but it was my last concern,” he wrote. “I was only 27. No way I had that. My dad had had Stage II colon cancer in 2011, but he was 58 then. We just thought I was way too young for me to have it.”

Mancini was diagnosed with cancer on March 6 after an endoscopy and colonoscopy, and underwent surgery to have the tumor removed six days later.

“I am so lucky. … Without the Orioles I never would have caught this before it may have been too late,” he wrote. “There was really no indication that anything was wrong other than me just feeling a little more tired than usual.”

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The first baseman and outfielder began chemotherapy treatment on April 13, and will continue receiving treatment every two weeks for six months.

“If baseball returns in 2020, it will probably be without me,” he wrote. “But I want everybody to know that I’m OK.”

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He added that dealing with cancer amid the coronavirus pandemic has been “crazy,” as he’s had to get chemo at a Baltimore hospital entirely alone due to hospital restrictions.

“Don’t get me wrong — I have bad days. I ask, ‘Why me? Why now?’ And that’s when Sara’s been really good about kicking me in the rear,” he wrote. “But she doesn’t have to do that too often, because I truly know how blessed I really am. It could happen to anybody.”

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Mancini revealed that he filled his teammates in on his condition a few days before he headed for surgery and that he managed to keep his composure until a clubhouse manager held his hands and started praying, at which point he “kind of lost it.”

“Really, the support I’ve gotten from everyone has just been unbelievable,” he wrote. “It’s given me an appreciation for a lot of things that I’ve always had, but that were getting overlooked as I went about my day-to-day life. Going through something like this ha really made me understand all my blessings.”

Mancini was coming off the best year of his career, having hit .291 with 35 home runs. He signed a new contract with the Orioles in January.