Every muggy morning was the same: Nic Enright trudged to a back field at the Miami Marlins’ complex in Jupiter, Fla., and tossed 40 pitches to Jose Iglesias, a late-spring signee who thwacked every fastball from the aspiring big-league pitcher.
At the end of each session in March 2023, Enright was drenched in sweat and demoralized. Every radar gun reading of a meager 88 mph had him question why he was pushing through the exhaustion.
“What am I doing?” he remembers thinking.
Enright had nothing more to give, thanks to debilitating rounds of cancer treatment. But he felt he had to give everything, to capitalize on a fleeting chance for a late-blooming reliever to reach the majors.
If he were a top prospect or a first-round pick with a hefty signing bonus, he could step away for a year or two to focus on his Hodgkin lymphoma. Or if he were in A-ball, a few leaps from the majors, perhaps the decision would be easier.
Instead, Miami had plucked him from Cleveland’s roster in the Rule 5 Draft, which placed him in the waiting room for the big leagues and teased a life-changing salary and chartered flights with ample leg room for his 6-foot-3 frame. He couldn’t abandon baseball now, even though his pitches lacked zip and it took months to fully recover from treatments.
A month earlier, a drained Enright lay awake in bed at his home in Rocky Mount, Va. His heart rate and skin temperature spiked as his body worked overtime to cope with a customary Thursday treatment.
On those wretched Thursdays, he would rise at 6 a.m., commute two and a half hours to the University of Virginia Cancer Center, slump in a waiting room chair, donate a vial of blood — which almost always caused him to faint — and then endure a three-and-a-half-hour immunotherapy session. The first couple rounds left him covered in hives, so doctors attached ice pouches to his arms.
By sunset, Enright was a zombie. He trudged out of the hospital with his wife, Erin, and his parents, and he could feel everyone’s stares. It wasn’t pity, he assured himself. It was empathy.
“But it’s infuriating,” he says. “It digs at you. Because this isn’t who I am.”
After those Thursday treatments, Enright spent his Fridays glued to the couch, in and out of sleep, nestled beneath their calico cat, Peaches. Those were the days Enright wondered how he could ever summon the strength to fire a heater past a hulking slugger. That’s when Erin would will him to Wade Park, where they complete at least two .75-mile laps around a trail.
On the eve of spring training in 2023, another listless Friday, there was no walk in Wade Park. There was no casting aside a new baseball season. Nic and Erin stuffed his black pickup truck full of essentials, including his glove and cleats. Hours after he underwent treatment, the two set off on an 800-mile voyage to Marlins camp.
When Enright was first diagnosed with cancer, he was convinced he would never stand atop a major-league mound. He soon realized, however, that to survive, he had no choice. There was no stepping away.
He needed baseball.
For 10 days in December 2022, after Enright joined the Marlins, he and his family reveled in the forthcoming chapter. They reminisced about Enright’s father taking him to the Windy Hill Sports Complex in Midlothian, Va., 20 years earlier to hack at 25-mph floaters. They studied up on their new favorite franchise and filled their online shopping carts with neon blue and orange gear.
On Dec. 17, Enright woke up and stared in the mirror. There was something the size and shape of a boiled egg protruding from his neck.
“Does this look swollen to you?” he asked Erin.
He downed some Tylenol and leaned against a heating pad. Surely, this was the work of an allergic reaction or an awkward sleeping position. A trip to urgent care for an amoxicillin prescription led to an ER visit. A couple harmless scans became an overnight stay in a private room. An assumption of an infection evolved into suspicion of something much worse.
Aside from the neck bulge, Enright felt completely normal. He had deadlifted 400 pounds that week. His fastball had extra sizzle that year, as he logged a 2.88 ERA with a sky-high strikeout rate. He and Erin were giggling in the ER, crafting their dinner plans.
“To, all of a sudden,” Enright says, “‘Oh my God. I have cancer.’”
Less than two weeks after the Marlins boosted his career, Enright was motionless in a hospital bed.
In an instant, he went from an unflappable pitcher one step from achieving his dream to feeling like a Dr. Frankenstein creation, with a labyrinth of needles and tubes weaving across his body.
At the hospital, Enright was spiraling. He rapidly cycled through every worst-case scenario. How the Marlins had gone out of their way to add him to their roster, and he had a spot reserved for him if he had a solid spring training, and that was a given since he had never felt better about his arm and his fastball had never zoomed toward the plate like this, and he was eager to jet to Jupiter to meet his new teammates, but what if baseball was being taken away from him, and what if he needed chemotherapy and he loses his floppy blond hair, and what if he feels too weak to grip a baseball and what if by the time this is all resolved no team wants a reliever past his prime and there’s no way he can ever pitch again?
“It felt like I was on roller skates,” Enright says, “going backwards down a hill while blindfolded.”
For a week after his diagnosis, Enright was existing in a fugue state. If he didn’t tell anyone, he thought, it wouldn’t be real.
“Those were some scary days and scary thoughts,” he says.
Then on Jan. 5, 2023, Enright received a call from an unfamiliar number. The Marlins’ trainer, through connections with the Mets, linked Enright with someone who could understand what he was going through.
During the 2019 season, Cleveland pitcher Carlos Carrasco was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. The veteran, nicknamed “Cookie” and known for an infectious smile, couldn’t shake his sluggishness while undergoing treatment but craved the camaraderie with his teammates and the normalcy of a repetitive baseball schedule. So, though he took a four-month leave, he continued to commute to Progressive Field that summer. If he kept pitching, he could convince himself this hardship was momentary, even as he and coach Carl Willis sobbed as Carrasco struggled to muster any oomph on his throws.
Carrasco shared with Enright his prevailing mantra: I might have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.
Hearing that rattled Enright from his stupor.
“It’s like a tree that’s been in the desert,” Enright says, “and all of a sudden a bunch of water gets dumped on it. I felt so much stronger, everything all seeping in.”
Enright’s doctor stressed that there was no playbook detailing how a mid-20s professional athlete should attack Stage 2 nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma. Since he was vying for a roster spot, and since the sport offers relief pitchers a limited earnings window that can slam shut without warning, they slotted his treatments around his baseball schedule. He drove to Virginia on off days for doctor appointments. He summoned every ounce of strength to complete bullpen sessions even as his body begged for mercy.
They agreed on a month of treatment before spring training in 2023, another dose at the All-Star break and another round when the season ended. The Marlins stayed in contact with Enright’s doctor, and Kim Ng, Miami’s GM at the time, said, “We were just incredibly concerned about him as a person.”
Each treatment begins with a cocktail of Benadryl and Tylenol. Then, doctors add in a steroid that makes him nauseous and spreads a tingling sensation throughout his body.
“I remember looking over to my mom and dad the first time,” Enright says, “like, ‘Wait, am I allowed? This would be the worst way to ever fail a drug test.’”
There are no banned substances used in his treatment, doctors assured him. And the steroid doesn’t help him throw harder. In fact, the entire process weakens him. His body needs a couple months to fully recuperate from a round of treatments. But, being so close to the majors, he plodded forward.
The Marlins placed him on the injured list to begin the 2023 season and encouraged him to keep building strength, but when the club’s decision deadline arrived in June, they shipped him back to the Guardians rather than grant him a promotion to the big-league club.
“The whole year was a blur,” Enright says. “I just wanted to go, go, go because I wanted to run away from all the things that happened in December and January.”
On June 9, 2023, while pitching for the Guardians’ Triple-A affiliate Columbus Clippers, Enright surrendered a pair of home runs against the Louisville Bats. His pitching coach, Owen Dew, visited the mound and assured him he had the mettle to record the final out of the inning.
On Enright’s ensuing pitch, Christian Encarnacion-Strand launched a home run to left field, a moment Enright considers a low point along his journey.
“There were points in ’23,” Dew says, “where it was, ‘OK, this is not the normal Nic.’ It was a matter of trying to keep his head above water. He wasn’t his best-performing self at that point, which we could all understand why. We knew how important it was to be around his teammates and the game.”
Enright arrived at Guardians spring training in 2024, hoping things would be different. He located his locker along the back wall of the clubhouse, with a navy No. 94 uniform hanging in the stall.
In the opposite corner of the room, there was another homecoming. A veteran pitcher was making an eagerly awaited return to the organization: Carlos Carrasco.
Enright entered 2024 on an upswing. Over the winter, he and Erin got married. He started the season in Columbus with four perfect innings: 12 up, 12 down, 10 strikeouts. His velocity spiked. His slider sambaed around hitters’ swings.
The right mental approach had been crucial. Enright modeled his off of James Conner, an NFL running back who was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in college. Conner savored every Monday spent anywhere but a hospital.
For Enright, that meant appreciating any Thursday free from immunotherapy. Those days are cause for Nic and Erin to have relaxing chats about the future on their back porch. Or to indulge at Pueblo Chico, a local favorite restaurant, where they gorge on arroz con pollo smothered in the gooiest queso.
Enright also read about major leaguers Anthony Rizzo, Jon Lester and Trey Mancini, all cancer survivors. He leaned on Carrasco and Mel Stottlemyre Jr. Their stories reinforced his inclinations about his own journey, about how baseball could be both healing and motivating. He strived to similarly inspire anyone who might one day search his name.
But to keep pushing for that elusive major-league chance, he would need a healthy checkup.
On April 7, after a game in Columbus, Enright drove eight hours to his parents’ home in Richmond, Va. He arrived at 1 a.m. and rose five hours later to venture to the hospital. He says he would have hauled twice as far for some good news.
Enright and his parents sat in a tense semi-silence in the car, as they usually did on their way to a checkup, despite his dad’s attempts at sparking light-hearted conversation about their beloved Green Bay Packers. Enright still fears these appointments. He felt perfectly fine when he was diagnosed with cancer in December 2022. Even when he’s firing fastballs past hitters, he still wonders if his body is cooperating beneath the surface.
Enright had never pitched this well in his life — not at Virginia Tech, not in high school, not on the backyard mulch mound positioned between the shed and the swingset, where it felt like he was throwing in a tunnel. He could hardly be closer to the majors without actually digging his cleats into the big-league dirt. It was equally encouraging and tormenting.
That day, Enright received his most promising feedback yet. His body was responding so well that he wouldn’t need another round of treatment at the All-Star break. He wouldn’t need to drive to Virginia for a checkup until after the season.
“I felt 50 pounds lighter,” he says, “like a weighted vest was lifted off.”
As April wore on, Enright’s shoulder started barking. He missed four months with an impingement. He spent much of that absence throwing before lunch on back fields in the 115-degree heat in Arizona.
“I’d take that any day of the week,” he says.
He returned to Columbus’ active roster in late August and resumed his string of scoreless innings. The Guardians held conversations about promoting him, but opted against it.
When the season ended, Enright underwent another series of treatments before he and Erin traveled to Grenada for their honeymoon. He recovered from his final dose on the sandy shores of the Caribbean Sea, where he admired his wife’s paddleboarding skills.
On their final day in the sun, Enright received a call from a Guardians official, who told him the team was adding him to their 40-man roster. At long last, his debut was coming. Nic and Erin celebrated with a bottle of champagne.
“There aren’t many guys you cheer for or pull for more than him,” says Guardians reliever Cade Smith.
One Thursday in February, Enright drove the 15 minutes to the Guardians’ spring training complex in Goodyear, Ariz., and marveled at the creamsicle-colored sunrise over the mountains.
He threw on a white jersey with red and navy piping, with his name and No. 94 on the back. For team photo day, Enright swung light sabers with fellow pitcher Daniel Espino and lifted Will Dion, clad in a Superman cape, into the air.
He played catch with Espino, each 90-foot toss through the crisp morning air another box checked along Enright’s path back from a lat strain. He completed isometric drills, ate an energy waffle, lifted weights and then received a BFR flush, as trainers equipped his right arm with a cuff that shooed away old blood and ushered in a new stream to spark his recovery.
“I’ll take a BFR flush over any of the tubes and wires I’m used to,” he says.
These are the Thursdays worth celebrating, the ones spent anywhere but tethered to a hospital bed. Enright dealt with a lat strain during spring training, but he laughed it off. He’s endured worse.
“It’s been almost cartoonish,” he says, referencing the constant setbacks. “It’s the little something on a string, but the string is attached to my back, so no matter how far forward I move, it stays the same distance away. It feels good to see this light at the end of the tunnel.”
Enright wrapped up his work at the Guardians’ facility and retreated to his apartment. He and Erin walked through a nearby park and then ate dinner. They toasted to another Thursday without a hospital visit, and to a year they hope will bring Enright’s long-awaited major-league debut.
That will be “one of the prouder moments,” Dew, his old pitching coach, says he’ll ever have.
“I don’t care where I’m at,” says Dew, now with the Diamondbacks. “If I have to sneak off to watch, I’m going to. I can’t imagine debuting is going to be harder than what he’s gone through the last 24-plus months. There will be a lot of teary eyes.”
Enright reported to Columbus in late April. He’ll have a checkup at the All-Star break and, after the season, one more round of treatments, which he hopes is the last round he’ll ever need.
In the meantime, after sticking with it through all the rotten Thursdays and dispiriting bullpen sessions, he’s one phone call from a dream opportunity.
“Fingers crossed,” he says, “I should be able to put this behind me.”
(Top illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Photos: Allan Henry / Imagn Images, courtesy of the Enright family)
