Chase Ewoldt stood on the dirt near the first-base line Friday at Wrigley Field watching as Anthony Rizzo made his way through the group wearing bright yellow T-shirts donning the name of his foundation.
At one point, Rizzo stopped to say hello to the 14-year-old he met years ago when Ewoldt was at Lurie Children’s Hospital battling aggressive brain and spine cancer. The Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation provided 200 tickets in Section 231 to the Chicago Cubs-New York Yankees game, as well as concessions vouchers and parking, to Lurie cancer patients, their families and nurses. Rizzo greeted the roughly three-dozen patients and their families gathered on the field before the Yankees took batting practice, taking time to sign baseballs and take pictures.
In his first game back at Wrigley since the Cubs traded him in July 2021, Rizzo’s continued work with Lurie fittingly was part of his return. Although Rizzo always will be remembered as a cornerstone player in his decade with the Cubs, helping bring a World Series title to the North Side in 2016, his legacy in the city goes beyond his on-field success and accolades.
Rizzo founded his nonprofit in 2012 to help families get through the most challenging time of their lives, shaped by his own lived experience. Less than a year after the Boston Red Sox drafted Rizzo out of high school, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. Five months of treatment later, doctors declared Rizzo was in remission in November 2008.
His foundation will hold its 13th annual Walk-Off for Cancer 5K on Nov. 24 in Parkland, Fla., Rizzo’s hometown. The event raised $1.3 million last year to benefit pediatric cancer families.
“That’s what as an athlete and baseball player with a platform you can really help out,” Rizzo said Friday. “I know a lot of different athletes take different initiatives, to me giving back to pediatric cancer means the most.”
Rizzo’s hands-on approach to his foundation work has left a lasting impact in the lives of families enduring the unimaginable. Beyond his visits to Lurie over the years, the foundation provides financial support that can range from covering meals in the hospital to paying a bill, such as a family’s mortgage, or even providing an experience, such as sending a family to Disney World.
“They live at the intersection of what the need is in the moment,” Ellie Ewoldt, of Wheaton, said. “They understand this isn’t just a pop-in and pop-out. Families are doing this for years and years and years at a time. That ability to look us in the eyes and be like, we’ve been the family in the hospital and what can we do to meet you there, is just such a gift.”
Chase Ewoldt was 2½ years old when diagnosed with cancer. He won that fight, though for the last five years has battled a secondary cancer (thyroid). As the Ewoldts weighed the treatment plan and how to pay for it, Rizzo’s foundation helped with their mortgage payment. It allowed them to meet the medical needs of Chase, the third of their four kids, and the Ewoldts were even able to attend a Cubs game that season.
Fighting a second cancer in seven years, part of a 12-year battle for Chase, financially would not have been possible without that help, Ellie Ewoldt said.
“It removes a lot of distress you’re under so that you can actually just be in the room with your child and with your family, not worrying about ‘How are we going to do this?’ ” Ewoldt said. “Who you see, that is the heart of him. Here he is going to play a huge game, and what is he doing? He’s spending time with them. There’s this humbleness in his heart, and it’s just a gift when it comes to the kids because he makes sure that they understand they’re not alone.”
Jennie Burke, of Glen Ellyn, knows her family could not have gone through her 15-year-old son Benjamin’s cancer journey without the Rizzos and the foundation’s support. Through the toughest stretches of Benjamin’s fight with leukemia after being diagnosed at 7 in December 2015, he discovered playing music as therapy was a guiding light in those times. Rizzo’s foundation heard Jennie was trying to secure a piano for Benjamin so he could move through the emotions of cancer at home. Unbeknownst to her, they helped pay for a grand piano she found.
Benjamin, in a No. 44 Rizzo jersey, rang the bell at the completion of his cancer treatment in April 2019 with the star by his side.
“They changed our lives, just like cancer did, but I am eternally grateful,” Jennie Burke said. “He is the real deal, it is his giant heart. Everybody feels like he’s their friend or their uncle or their cousin. When your child is literally at their darkest moment, he brings all the joy, all the hope.”
Rizzo visits Lurie whenever he is back in Chicago, making trip there Thursday with his wife, Emily, on the Yankees’ off day. Rizzo’s return to Wrigley aptly comes during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.
“To put smiles on people’s faces that are going through hard times means more than anything I can do on a baseball field,” Rizzo said. “And to continue to do that in New York and Chicago, all around the country now, really means the most. I love baseball. It’s what I’ve dreamed of doing my whole life. With that being said, though, to be able to help out families, it’s a feeling that you just can’t get on the baseball field.”
Rizzo’s approachability often has the kids he has met through Lurie calling him their friend, reinforced by the continued bonds that manifest from Rizzo checking in to say happy birthday or see how treatment is going. Matthew Erickson, 12, of Huntley, met Rizzo when he was less than 1 after he was born with a rare and usually fatal form of brain cancer. Matthew, whose first steps were to Rizzo years ago, doesn’t fully understand the baseball version he has seen on TV. It’s more personal, a lifelong connection for Matthew, his parents, Ben and Sue, and sister Sophia.
“My big buddy!” an exuberant Matthew proclaimed during BP when hearing Rizzo’s name.
On the oncology floor at Lurie, a message Rizzo routinely shares with the children he visits is painted on the wall: “Stay Strong, Dream Big.” At 6-foot-3 with 303 career home runs having played for two of the most storied MLB franchises, Rizzo, 35, helps those kids look beyond their current battle.
Those sparks of joy transcend the baseball diamond.
“The kids see what is possible, which is not always something that they can have a grasp on,” Ewoldt said. “Doctors don’t know, right? Many of us just live from day to day and from moment to moment, and with Anthony they get a glimpse of what their future could be.”
