Cancer is an insidious disease. Hearing a diagnosis of the dreadful disease can cause all sorts of irrational responses including denial. That's the route Washington Nationals GM Jim Bowden took when he found out he had skin cancer over the summer.
Doctors recommended surgery within a month so that the disease wouldn't spread but Bowden ignored them and remained with the team through the end of the season. Just so we're clear, rather than undergo a potentially life-saving procedure, Bowden chose to remain with a rancid baseball team through the bitter end of a miserable campaign. He's since had the surgery and now realizes that he made the wrong choice.
"It's just with baseball, there's not a lot of time when you have the draft, trade deadlines. Just a lot of things have to happen. I got different opinions. Some said it's okay to wait, others said you shouldn't wait. In retrospect, I would advise anybody to get it done as soon as possible. Because that type of cancer can grow extremely fast."
Something tells me the Nationals wouldn't have seen a marked change in their fortunes if Bowden had missed a little time to take care of his health. The gap between hideously bad and horrendously bad doesn't mean much compared to your life, an important lesson for whoever winds up taking the Mariners GM job.
