All-Star Player Shares Story of Melanoma Dx

CORONADO, CALIF. — As a two-time all-star Major League Baseball player, Mark Loretta knows a thing or two about how to handle pressure.

But nothing could prepare the second baseman for the curve ball diagnosis of melanoma he received in the summer of 2004 during a routine skin screening program sponsored by Major League Baseball and the American Academy of Dermatology.

There, a dermatologist noticed a mole on the center of his chest.

"It's something I felt had there for a long time, but the doctor said, 'This looks a bit precarious. It looks like a bad actor. We probably don't need to take it off today, but after the season's over why don't you have it looked at?'" Mr. Loretta said at an update on melanoma sponsored by the Scripps Clinic.

In October of that year he had the lesion biopsied and it came back positive for stage I melanoma. A month later the lesion was removed in a wide excision operation performed by Dr. Hubert T. Greenway Jr., director of cutaneous oncology at the Ida M. and Cecil H. Green Cancer Center at Scripps Clinic, La Jolla, Calif.

The lesion "was the size of a large piece of sushi," said Mr. Loretta, who signed with the Houston Astros in January after playing for the Boston Red Sox last year. "I didn't expect such a large piece to be taken out."

His current follow-up regimen involves clinical exams every 3 months.

He went on to note that two aspects of his diagnosis and treatment proved difficult from a patient standpoint. One was the anxiety of "not knowing what you're dealing with," he said, explaining that you can get on the Internet "and get bits of information [about melanoma] here and there, and all of a sudden your head starts spinning. You start reading about sentinel node biopsy, about chemotherapy and radiation."

Mr. Loretta, who grew up in Southern California and had an uncle who died from melanoma, also said that he underestimated what the wide excision procedure was going to entail.

That "was probably based on where the tumor was, in the center of my chest, which doesn't have a lot of meaty tissue," he said. "I also underestimated the time it would take for me to recover."

During public speaking engagements to raise awareness of skin cancer, Mr. Loretta said that he imparts a simple message: "Get in and get checked. "A skin exam, he noted, is "not very invasive."