ESPN.com: Ray Still Fighting To Play

May 22, 2009

By Adam Rittenberg, ESPN.com

EAST LANSING, Mich. - A large man appears at the entrance to the Skandalaris Football Center, braces himself with his crutches, swings open the door and hobbles inside.

The interview will be held on the second floor, and while the stairs are navigable, the football-shaped elevator is the safer option. When Arthur Ray Jr. reaches his destination, the lobby outside Michigan State's football offices, he lowers himself onto a couch and places his crutches to the side.

The crutches have accompanied Ray since July 2007, when he underwent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor from his right leg. Last week, doctors gave him the go-ahead to use only one crutch, but he hasn't fully supported himself for nearly 21 months.

He has enough hardware in his leg to fill a shelf at Ace or Home Depot. He has undergone four surgeries in addition to several other chemotherapy procedures. Amputation is still a word doctors use around Ray, who had a type of bone cancer that often results in patients losing a limb.

Bottom line: Ray doesn't look like a man who could play offensive line for Michigan State.

He doesn't pass the eye test.

But he aces the ear test.

Listen to Ray tell his story and it's hard not to believe that one day, he'll fulfill his dream and suit up in green and white.

"If all else fails, I just want my health, man," he said. "I just want to be able to walk without crutches. I just want to live a normal life again without restrictions, without worries.

"But there's still that itch in me. Football is in me. I can't give it up. I can't just wake up and be like, 'Maybe I don't want to play.' I do. I can play this game."

He played it extremely well for most of his life.

Ray was just a freshman in high school when he proudly informed his dad, Arthur Sr., that he would be going to college for free. After starring as an offensive lineman for Chicago-area powerhouse Mount Carmel High School, the younger Ray proved prophetic as scholarship offers streamed in from around the Midwest. He settled on Michigan State.

Toward the end of his senior season at Mount Carmel, Ray noticed a bump on his right leg. He didn't think much of it.

"In high school, they tell the D-linemen to dive at your legs," he said, "so I thought I just got bumped up, nothing too big. I just iced it."

The bump started growing and became more noticeable when Ray played in a high school All-American game in Florida on Jan. 4, 2007. But it wasn't enough to worry about, likely the result of another season in the trenches.

He signed with Michigan State in February and looked forward to preseason practice.

"Then I was in school one day and I couldn't walk up the stairs," Ray said. "It was pain, real bad."

He underwent tests on the bump. Doctors initially thought it was a hematoma, but a biopsy showed it was a cancerous tumor.

The day before Michigan State's spring game in April, Ray was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare type of bone cancer most often seen in teenage boys.

"It was crushing," Ray said.

Michigan State offensive line coach Dan Roushar, who recruited Ray to the school, was scheduled to start a recruiting trip in the Chicago area immediately after the spring game.

Instead, he got the go-ahead from head coach Mark Dantonio to shelve recruiting and accompany Ray and his family as they visited an oncologist.

The doctor detailed a daunting prognosis.

"They're talking about going through chemo and the chance of sterility occurring, loss of the limb, the potential for death, all the things they have to share with you," Roushar said. "We walked out of their office and I know I personally don't ever recall feeling as troubled and concerned for this young man and his family."

A different set of emotions rushed through Ray.

"This doctor, he didn't have too good of bedside manner," he said. "He was just like, 'You've got to start immediate chemotherapy. Throw football out the window. The most you'll do is run around with your grandkids.' I'm 17. I'm not trying to hear that at all. I'm not thinking about grandkids.

"He made me pretty angry that day."

Roushar immediately got on the phone with Michigan State's training staff, hoping to find a second opinion for Ray. Four days later, they met with Dr. Steven Gitelis, an orthopedic oncologist and a renowned surgeon who has written papers on osteosarcoma.

Gitelis provided a much more encouraging outlook. Since Ray's tumor was located at the base of his shin rather than on or near the knee joint, he wouldn't need a full knee replacement, which would have ended any hope of playing football again.

"If my cancer was about two or three inches higher, we wouldn't be talking right now," Ray said. "There wouldn't be a chance [to play]."

Click here to read the rest of Adam Rittenberg's feature on Arthur Ray Jr.