Click for printable version
Click to send to a friend

Norine Rathbone watches her teammates play in a recent Men's Senior Baseball League game at Eldorado High School. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

Sunday, August 05, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

SURVIVING CANCER: Local player fights back in game of life

Rathbone, woman in men's league, eyes return to field

Some days Norine Rathbone doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. There are days that she does both.

One thing that never crosses her mind is surrender. Rathbone continues to fight, both in life and on the baseball field, where she is the only woman in the local Men's Senior Baseball League.

The Las Vegas resident became excited about the sport the day her father put a baseball in her hands. That day, Rathbone decided she wanted to be a baseball player.

She practiced with the local Little League, but her father wouldn't let her play in games. Girls growing up in the 1960s were supposed to play softball, so Rathbone did.

She didn't return to baseball until she was 42.

However, Rathbone's biggest battles wouldn't come from the men she faced on the diamond. No, the competition was easy compared to the foe that nearly took her life: cancer.

• • •

On Dec. 6, 2000, Rathbone went for a mammogram. She didn't panic when two lumps were discovered on her left breast.

"My first thought was, crap, I'm going to miss the start of the baseball year," Rathbone, 43, said. "I wasn't upset about cancer. I had two tumors that were really big. I thought I just had an infection."

On Jan. 17, Rathbone underwent a double mastectomy. There was a history of cancer on her mother's side of the family, and the doctors didn't want to take any chances.

"I was thinking I'm going to be flat-chested for the first time in my life," Rathbone laughed. "I was thinking I will be able to run faster, I will be able to play baseball better."

She maintained her sense of humor through the ordeal, perhaps as a way of coping with her fear.

"I was scared," Rathbone said. "I still am."

She said it helped that her husband of 23 years, Ed, treated her normally instead of as a cancer patient.

"Cancer is you against you," Rathbone said. "Your cells are doing something weird against your body. Cancer is not the death sentence it was in my mother's day."

• • •

One day in 1999, Rathbone went with a friend to a car dealership. The salesman talked about the Men's Senior Baseball League. Right then, Rathbone decided she had to play in the league.

She knew there were no women in the MSBL. Rathbone worked her way into the league under the pretense that she would shoot sports photography.

"I wanted to get a uniform and wear it even if I didn't play," she said. "I set up a meeting with George (Johnson, president of the MSBL). I told him about playing softball for 20 years. I told him I didn't want to play softball, but you guys wouldn't let me play baseball. I wish I could play in your league."

Johnson surprised her by saying, "I don't have a problem with that."

"Now, I'm shaking," Rathbone said. "He told me he had a team I could try out for, that I could make it. I told him, 'You don't understand. I'm 30 pounds overweight.' He told me he wanted me to try out for the team."

After prodding, Rathbone agreed. She was picked up by Million $ Country manager Paul Bowman even before the 2000 draft.

She was in the MSBL. Her dream was realized.

• • •

"Yes, my chest looks ugly, a permanent reminder of what I've been through," Rathbone said. "But it is with pride that my battle scars are from a fight well done, with my head held up the whole time."

After her surgery, Rathbone faced chemotherapy.

But her attitude was, "What's a few months of being sick from chemo, if it gains you many years of living afterwards."

Rathbone treated each three-week chemotherapy session as a heavyweight title fight.

"Most of the time I was upbeat," she said. "You get knocked down a couple of times but it was like six major title fights. And I defended my title each time. I call myself a cancer fighting champion."

Her chemotherapy ended July 16. This month Rathbone will start 6 1/2 weeks of daily radiation on the left side of her chest, the original site of the cancer. After that Rathbone will be on anti-cancer drugs for the rest of her life.

• • •

"People in the league think she's a mascot or a token player," Richard Huff, a center fielder for Million $ Country, said. "She's not. She's a part of the team. She's a ballplayer."

Rathbone figured 2001 would be her year. She was a backup her first season at first base, recording one hit in 10 at-bats.

"She's one notch below the players from a hitting standpoint, and she doesn't throw as hard as the guys," Bowman said. "She fields well and has the desire to play, and she plays hard. She's improved every year. It's hard for her because she hasn't played at this level. She has the ability."

With a baseball cap covering her bald head, Rathbone returned to the field this season, as a first-base coach.

"I look at Norine as one of the guys," teammate Mike Ott said. "She's a fighter. I couldn't do what she's done. I admire her for it. We treat her as an equal. She's the first to make a joke about her cancer."

Rathbone promises to return to the playing field next year in the MSBL. Her goal of securing a starting position remains.

And while she might remain the only woman in the league, Rathbone said she won't have to go it alone.

"There are actually three girls in the league now," she said, referring to two names etched into her baseball bat. "There is Laurie Stapleton, my surgeon, Ann Wierman, my oncologist, and me."