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Chicago Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo is the 2017 winner of the prestigious Roberto Clemente Award, Major League Baseball announced on Friday. Rizzo, who survived Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2008, has raised more than $4 million through the Anthony Rizzo Family Foundation to help families of cancer patients.
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He was thrilled on Friday to learn he had won the Clemente Award, which goes annually to the player "who best represents baseball through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions, both on and off the field."
"When I found out, it was really emotional for everyone involved in the foundation and my life," the 28-year-old Rizzo said. "Baseball is my passion. I love playing baseball. I want to be the best I can be, but to be able to reach out and reach so many different people on a different level, I never overlook it."
Rizzo's foundation hosts multiple fundraisers each year for cancer patients. He visits hospitals all through Chicago and says he draws motivation from each visit.
"You see the looks on the kids' faces," Rizzo said. "It's a couple seconds away from reality from what they're going through when I go in there."
Earlier this season, the three-time All-Star made a visit he cherished. And it wasn't to a hospital.
The Cubs were in Pittsburgh and Rizzo visited The Clemente Museum.
"He set the bar for all athletes, especially baseball players," Rizzo said of Clemente, the former Pittsburgh Pirates' star killed in a plane crash on Dec. 31, 1972 while trying to help get supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
The award began in 1971 as the Commissioner's Award and was changed to honor in Clemente in 1973.
