Podcast: Northeastern’s Phil Di Blasi on his bout with brain cancer

The Northeastern baseball team celebrated the conclusion of Phil Di Blasi's chemotherapy on Dec. 2. (Northeastern Athletics)

For the final podcast of 2022, we have a special guest that captures the spirit of the holiday season. Northeastern sophomore Phil Di Blasi recently completed a 13-month cycle of radiation and chemotherapy to combat a diagnosis of medulloblastoma, a type of brain cancer found in the cerebellum. 

Di Blasi’s baseball dreams were postponed when he was diagnosed in the fall of his freshman year in 2021. Doctors performed an eight-hour surgery to remove a mass from Di Blasi’s brain. Once the doctors determined the growth was malignant, he began the radiation and chemotherapy treatments.

“They told me, ‘We found a mass on your brain stem, and we have to do emergency surgery tomorrow to get it removed,'” Di Blasi said. “At that point, they didn’t know whether it was cancer. They had to do some tests to figure it out. I said, ‘Wow, alright.’ They said, ‘We’ll call your parents.’ I said, ‘Yeah, just tell them I’ll be fine.’ And let’s do it.’

“When they told me it was cancer, I was drugged out from the surgery. It was an eight-hour surgery. They said, ‘There’s no nerve damage. There’s no damage to the brain. There’s a chance you could come back from this, but it’s going to take time.’ That’s all I needed was to know the doctors thought I had a chance.”

The lengthy fight sapped Di Blasi of much of the strength and coordination that made him a coveted D1 recruit coming out of BC High in 2021. The Derry, N.H., native had moments when he considered abandoning the quest to return to the mound.

“I was told early on that were going to be bad days, and I didn’t really know what the bad days were,” Di Blasi said. “Then I started to figure that out. Once I moved back home from the hospital, my day would basically include waking up, going downstairs, getting breakfast, and watching TV because I couldn’t do anything else.

“That kind of took an effect on me. It was like, ‘This is my life now. This is what I do every single day.’ When I started neurological (physical therapy), it was even tougher because I was taking a lot of time to do tasks that I could do. It just wasn’t fun. It wasn’t something I could smile about.”

At the start of last summer, Di Blasi consulted with Northeastern coach Mike Glavine about the possibility of leaving the sport of baseball.

“I said, ‘Coach, I don’t think I’m going to do this anymore,'” Di Blasi said. “I don’t think there’s a possibility of me coming back. I’m just seeing no progress.”

That served as a turning point for Di Blasi. His body responded well to the treatments throughout the summer and fall, and he concluded chemotherapy on Dec. 6. The entire Northeastern squad met him in the hospital to celebrate the conclusion of the lengthy chemo cycle. He also recently began training for a return to the field.

“Dec. 28 is the day I get my after-treatment scans,” Di Blasi said. “Those are the big scans to decide whether or not I’m cancer-free. So, fingers crossed for those, but I feel a lot better right now.”

Listen to the entire podcast with Phil Di Blasi.

The New England Baseball Journal podcast is brought to you by the University of Nebraska High School.

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