LITTLETON — If Tommy Gillman boots a grounder, you won’t see him throw his glove.
If he sails a throw from the left side of the infield into the stands, he will deal with it.
If he strikes out with the bases loaded and his team trailing by a run, so be it. And if he gets thrown out on the bases, loses a pop fly in the sun or has extra bases taken away by a great play, he will grab his glove and head to his position with no complaints.
The senior at Class 5A Columbine has seen worse. Much worse.
When he was 9 years old, he accompanied a team to Omaha and suddenly struggled to do anything physically. He had what he thought was the flu. It turned out to be Burkitt’s lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, specifically B lymphocytes found in the germinal center. It was discovered in 1958 in equatorial Africa and somehow found its way to a 9-year-old in Colorado … a few of them, in fact.
“There were four of them,” said Columbine coach Chuck Gillman, Tommy’s dad.
Tommy joined three others at St. Luke’s Presbyterian Hospital.
“All three were kids, all young and strong, all were athletes,” Chuck Gillman said. “Even the doctor said ‘we had no idea’ where it came from. It always seems to hit athletes and kids outdoors. Maybe the fertilizer in the grass … they couldn’t put a finger on it.”
All Tommy Gillman knew was how lousy he felt. He wondered whether he had growing pains. His knees, he said, were killing him. He would hit the ball and be unable to run to first base. Then there was the vomiting, the constant yearning to sleep, his body starting to show bruises. But the blood tests showed cancer.
“I knew what cancer was, but I didn’t know how bad it was,” he said. “It just sounded crazy that I could die.”
Gillman next showed his smarts, as well as his bravery.
“(Doctors) told me there were two types of treatment,” he said. “They kind of dumbed it down for me. They said, ‘We can give you the kid version of (chemotherapy) and it will take a year, a year and a half, or we can give you the adult kind. You’ll feel a lot worse, but it could get you better in six to seven months.’ Heck, I was totally with the adult stuff.”
Said Chuck Gillman: “He just said, ‘Let’s get this over with.’ “
The fourth-grader had to miss a lot of class time, “and the first two or three months, even the fourth and fifth, were brutal,” he said. “It was intense, really hard therapy. I was sick, I was throwing up. I had more medicine than food … I can’t remember eating … ever.”
He dropped to about 40 pounds.
“It seemed like I had a new doctor every week,” he said. “I’d ask them who they thought was the sickest kid they ever had. They all told me it was me.”
Chuck Gillman and older son C.J., a two-sport star and now an assistant baseball coach at the Air Force Academy — shaved their heads in support of Tommy. Teammates on his youth baseball team, the Dakota Ridge Bulls, made and wore wristbands in his honor.
Gillman said he started to feel like himself a few months into the new year. And as time went on, so did his outlook.
“I use it as, almost to me, as a blessing in disguise, a whole new perspective on life,” he said. “Things could be way worse.”
Gillman was a regular at catcher for the Rebels in his freshman and sophomore seasons. He couldn’t play shortstop because he was behind consecutive Division I signees. He took over a year ago, the season in which he committed to play for national power Texas A&M.
He turned 18 on March 11. Birthdays have added meaning for cancer survivors, as do final sports seasons. He would love to lead Columbine deep into the postseason. It’s his turn to be at the top of a baseball family.
The Rebels are 2-1 after beating Brighton on Wednesday, their loss coming in a 5-4 game against 2015 state champion Rock Canyon.
“We all like each other,” Gillman said of his teammates. “And we want to make state so bad.”
Neil H. Devlin: ndevlin@denverpost.com or @neildevlin
