Home run for health

Breast cancer survivor tries out for Detroit Tigers with pink bat

Jan Hogan/ViewCancer survivor Norine Rathbone stands in the lobby of the Nevada Cancer Institute, April 16. Besides baseball, Rathbone also plays football for the all-female Las Vegas Showgirlz team. Jan Hogan/ViewNevada Cancer Institute marketing and public relations director Jennifer McDonnell, foreground, holds up a poster of cancer survivor Norine Rathbone playing baseball as Rathbone looks on at the institute, April 16. Jan Hogan/ViewSummerlin-area resident and breast cancer survivor Norine Rathbone looks over her official regulation pink Louisville Slugger baseball bat at the Nevada Cancer Institute, 1 Breakthrough Way, April 16. Rathbone, who plays baseball for the Las Vegas Sandvipers team in the Men?s Senior Baseball League, was, at age 51, invited to try out for the Detroit Tigers? minor league team on March 9. She was the first woman to receive such an honor. Advertisement

Norine Rathbone has a pink Louisville Slugger regulation baseball bat and, watch out boys, because she intends to use it.

She's aiming for the 2016 Olympics, when she hopes the games will include women's baseball. After all, she recently tried out for the Detroit Tigers and was the first woman to ever receive a personal invitation.

The pink bat is a symbol of her personal battle. She's survived cancer twice and now is an unofficial speaker for cancer research.

"My uniform is my business suit, my baseball bag is my attache case," she said.

As a child, growing up in Buffalo, N.Y., Rathbone was the self-proclaimed neighborhood tomboy. Her father coached Little League for 15 years, and between that and watching the Brooklyn Dodgers on television, Rathbone fostered a deep desire to play the sport.

"But I had to settle for softball, and I wasn't thrilled about it," she said. "Softball is not the same as baseball."

Decades later, she got her chance.

It all started when she did photography work for the Las Vegas Men's Senior Baseball League, hoping to get on a team. It led to her taking to the field to show off her stuff after MSBL President George Johnson sent her to Paul Bowman's Million $ Country team. Bowman watched her play for 15 minutes and decided he'd seen enough. He put her in the line-up of his all-male team.

Gary Arltiz inherited Rathbone, a Summerlin-area resident, when he became general manager.

"I kept her, based on her love and devotion for the game," he said. "She's very passionate about it and her cause, and that can be infectious and carry over to others, and she's just a great person."

She got along well with her teammates, overlooked the swearing, and showed her moxie by "eating dirt" -- diving face first in a valiant effort to make a play.

"I learned to spit, too," she said. "But only sunflower seeds. I draw the line at that."

Then, disaster hit. She got the news in late 2000 that she had breast cancer. Her family's medical history, she later learned, was heavily spotted with it. The news could not have come at a worse time.

"For 39 years, I've been wanting to play baseball, and now I get cancer?" she said. "I was angry, real angry. I think that's what made me so determined to fight it."

Rathbone underwent a double mastectomy in January 2001, just two months before the baseball season began.

She joked about her baldness with her teammates, watched from the sidelines when she was too weak to stand and ducked behind the dugout near first base when the chemotherapy caused her to throw up.

When her husband changed jobs, so did their medical insurance. She was unable to continue post-care treatment to maintain her cancer-free health at a local cancer center. So, calling up their new medical insurance company, Rathbone and her husband learned that Dr. Phillip Manno from the Nevada Cancer Institute, 1 Breakthrough Way, was on their provider list.

They made an appointment in 2003 not knowing she was one of the first patients at the institute's satellite office while the new center was under construction.

Dr. Manno himself is a former athlete and just a few months older than Rathbone. They talked baseball, talked cancer, talked life.

Then, major league baseball teamed up with bat manufacturer Louisville Slugger a few years ago to start the pink bat program, which benefits the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to wipe out breast cancer.

Rathbone watched TV as male athletes stood at home plate, swinging a pink bat on Mother's Day. She saw it as a slap in the face, both as a breast cancer survivor and as a woman.

It was the perfect opportunity for a female survivor to take home plate, to swing a pink bat.

It was the perfect opportunity, she said, for someone just like her.

Rathbone, who now plays and coaches for the Las Vegas Sandvipers, helped the all men/one woman team take the fall 2007 Las Vegas Valley Baseball League Championship and then again in spring 2008.

She also plays for the Las Vegas Showgirlz, an all-female football team.

"Just four years ago when we started the team, people thought that no way, no how, can women play the sport," Showgirlz owner and head coach Dion Lee said. "But now ... women are playing football and playing it well."

Last winter, Rathbone decided to act on that dream from when she was a child. She designed a media presentation about herself, called A Real Live Pink Bat, and sent 91 copies to major league baseball. Only one team contacted her, the Detroit Tigers.

The management for the team wanted to include her in its minor league baseball tryouts.

So, last month, she and her husband of 30 years, Ed, flew to Lakeland, Fla. She tried out for the team March 9.

"Putting on the uniform, it changes you," she said. "You feel the confidence it (inspires), you feel really, really important."

Rathbone was standing in line when Glen Ezell, director of player development, crooked his finger at her.

He pulled her aside and said that he was honored she was there. He told her to forget about being 51, to forget about being the only woman.

"He told me after the tryout that, 'You're a baseball player,' " she said. "I waited my whole life to hear that."

As it turned out, Rathbone didn't make the team, but she did made the 6 o'clock Tampa Bay news.

Now, she's been approached about traveling to Saudi Arabia to speak about breast cancer in a country where it's still considered a taboo to discuss openly.

She's also been named Susan G. Komen Southern Nevada's 2008 Athlete Survivor of the Year.

And that pink bat? It was a present from Louisville Slugger's vice president.

Contact Summerlin View and South Summerlin View reporter Jan Hogan at jhogan@viewnews.com or 387-2949.