Cubs skipper honors Sonoma Valley High baseball coach Don Lyons

Dragon baseball coach Don Lyons is long-time friend|

After the fifth inning at Saturday night’s World Series game between the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, Major League Baseball halted the game for its annual Stand up to Cancer event.

All of the fans, the players and the umpires were given cards ahead of time that they could fill in the name of someone to honor.

The television cameras panned around the stadium stopping on various players and spectators.

Cubs’ Manager Joe Maddon was shown holding a sign that simply said, “Doc.”

Maddon was honoring his longtime friend, Sonoma Valley High teacher and Dragon baseball coach, Don Lyons.

“I didn’t know he was going to do that,” Lyons said. “We were watching and my son Travis, said, ‘I think he means you.’”

Doc was Lyons’ nickname when he played in the Angels farm system with Maddon back in the mid-1970s.

“It was an emotional moment,” Lyons said. “I broke down.”

For most of this year, Lyons has been battling oropharyngeal cancer, which is a throat and mouth cancer. After seven weeks of radiation treatments and three chemotherapy sessions, Lyons is now cancer free.

The original diagnosis was Stage 4, but doctors found that it hadn’t spread. Lyons stepped away from teaching last February, but he did coach the Dragon baseball team this spring even while going through treatments.

“Joe’s been in contact the entire time,” Lyons said.

The two would either talk or at least text each other almost every day since Lyons first found out about the cancer.

In August, after his radiation and chemo were finished, Maddon invited Lyons, his son Tommy, and two friends to come to Chicago – on him.

“Joe put us up in the same hotel he lives in, got us a town car and got us tickets for five games,” he said. “The first game, we were in the first row right behind home plate.” The next night they were a couple of rows back, the third night was in the fifth row and the fourth night was right behind the Cubs dugout.

“One day, he gave us a tour of the ballpark,” Lyons said. It was the first time Lyons had visited Wrigley Field.

“We had a couple of hours until game time, so Joe told us we could go sit in the dugout,” he said.

“We asked him if we could go out on the field and play catch. He said ‘sure,’ but he made sure we all had Cub jerseys on before we stepped out on the field. He gave us baseballs and shirts and one of my friends had a cell-phone video of us playing catch.”

Lyons said they met just about all of the players, and added they couldn’t have been nicer.

“We watched him prepare his matrix before each game and asked him questions after the game about why he did something.”

Lyons even had Maddon sign some baseballs for his oncologists.

“I’m collecting oncologists,” he said. “It’s not something you really want to do.”

Over the years, Lyons has picked Maddon’s brain for ideas – and then would steal them.

“In 2008 when we (the Dragons) won the NCS (North Coast Section championship), we squeezed eight times,” he said. “That was something I picked up from Joe. He really prepares his guys.”

On New Year’s Day, when they were chatting, Maddon told Lyons about his slogan for this year – which is “Do Simple Better.”

“I liked it and told him I was going to steal if from him. He said I couldn’t because it was already trademarked by Major League Baseball,” Lyons said. “I told him, we’re a small school, they’ll never know. He said, ‘they’ll come for you.”

And while Lyons couldn’t use it, Maddon did send the team two dozen T-shirts with the slogan printed on them.

“He gets Dragon gear every year,” he laughed. “And we sent him a pic of the kids wearing the T-shirts.”

Wednesday night, Lyons’ long-time friend added a World Series title to his list of accomplishments.

Besides honoring Lyons Saturday night, in the lower right and corner of the sign, Maddon had also written “Hi Bev,” a reference to Lyons’ 87-year-old mother.

“He’s a pretty cool guy,” Lyons said.

“He’s real special.”

While he is cancer free, Lyons isn’t out of the woods yet. He’s lost about 40 pounds, can’t taste anything and will have to go back to the oncologist every three months for scans.

But he’s hoping to go back to his classroom at Sonoma Valley High on Tuesday where he’ll be teaching two English classes. And he can’t wait to get back out on the baseball field with his team the first part of February.

“I feel so lucky I get to coach again,” he said.

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