Bryan R. SmithMel Stottlemyre’s health is much improved as he continues to battle multiple myeloma.
Happy to report that Mel Stottlemyre’s health is much-improved as he continues to battle multiple myeloma, the blood cancer he was diagnosed with in 1999.
“This is the best I’ve been in some time,” Stottlemyre said by phone from his Seattle-area home. “I’m doing a lot better than when people saw me in New York.”
Yes, everyone was bracing for the worst after Stottlemyre’s poignant, I’m-ready-to-coach-in-Heaven speech on Old-Timers Day last summer, when the Yankees surprised their former ace and pitching coach with a plaque that has a permanent spot in Monument Park.
But Stottlemyre says that a change in medication has had a miraculous effect over the last few months.
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“I’m doing so well that the doctor told me I can pretty much live normally again,” Stottlemyre said. “I’m going to get out and do more fishing again. I might even try to play golf again too.”
It’s a dramatic improvement from last June when I visited Stottlemyre and he was worn down from the daily fight with cancer, constantly in and out of the hospital for treatment. Now, at age 74, he sounds strong and vibrant again, as he continues to defy the odds of one of the more deadly forms of cancer.
“He’s out-lived expectations,” Yankee trainer and close friend Steve Donahue said last June. “He’s amazed everyone.”
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