Remembering Roger Maris and Understanding Lymphoma

What the 1985 obituary recorded

Roger Maris hit 61 home runs in 1961 and broke Babe Ruth's single-season record. He died in December 1985 at age 51.

His obituary in The Washington Post named the illness as "lymphoma, a cancer that invades the body's lymph system." It reported that he was diagnosed in November 1983 and was being treated at the M.D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Texas, where he had been hospitalized since November 20.

Contemporary coverage did not specify which lymphoma he had, so this page does not either. That gap is a good place to start, because the first question a hematologist asks is exactly that one.

One cell decides the name

Lymphoma splits into two families, and the split rests on a single cell.

Under the microscope, Hodgkin lymphoma contains Reed-Sternberg cells: large abnormal cells, often with two mirror-image nuclei that give them an owl-eyed look. Everything else is non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a category covering dozens of separate diseases.

Pathologists confirm it with immunophenotyping, which tags proteins on the cell surface. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) gives the classic pattern for classical Hodgkin lymphoma as CD15 positive, CD20 negative, CD30 positive, and CD45 negative. Nodular lymphocyte-predominant Hodgkin lymphoma reverses that pattern: CD15 negative, CD20 positive, CD30 negative, CD45 positive.

This is not trivia. Those four markers determine the drugs.

Two diseases with different life stories

Hodgkin lymphoma is uncommon and highly curable. The American Cancer Society projects about 8,920 new cases and 1,100 deaths in the US for 2026, a figure SEER republishes. NCI states that up to 90% of newly diagnosed patients "can be cured with combination chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy."

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is far more common and far more varied. Some subtypes are slow and never cured but controlled for decades. Others are fast and often cured outright.

Hodgkin lymphoma also strikes younger. SEER, the federal cancer surveillance program, reports that 31.7% of cases occur between ages 20 and 34, with a median age at diagnosis of 38. Another 12.2% occur under age 20.

How it announces itself

NCI reports that most patients present with painless, swollen lymph nodes in the neck, armpit, or groin. Hodgkin lymphoma most often appears in node groups above the diaphragm, or in the nodes inside the chest.

B symptoms are recorded formally because they change the stage. NCI defines them precisely:

• Fever of 38°C or higher, which is 100.4°F
• Drenching night sweats
• Weight loss of more than 10% of body weight over six months

When to get a node checked

Most swollen glands are infection and settle within two or three weeks. Book an appointment if you have:

• A lump in the neck, armpit, or groin that is painless, firm, and still present after four weeks
• Any node that is visibly larger than it was a fortnight ago
• Persistent itching over the whole body with no rash
• Any of the three B symptoms above
• Pain in a lymph node after drinking alcohol, an unusual but real feature of Hodgkin lymphoma

Seek same-day care for new breathlessness, a cough that will not stop, swelling of the face or neck, or a change in your voice. A mass in the chest can press on the airway or on the large vein returning blood from the head.

Staging, and the scan that predicts

Staging uses the Lugano classification, which runs from stage I, a single nodal site, to stage IV, widespread involvement. The letters matter too. An "E" marks spread into an organ next to a node, and "A" or "B" records whether B symptoms are present.

One test stands out. NCI states that "the best predictor of treatment failure is a PET-CT scan obtained after two cycles of chemotherapy." That interim scan lets teams intensify or de-escalate treatment early, rather than waiting until the end.

What treatment involves

The standard regimen is ABVD: doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine, with or without radiation. Chemotherapy alone produces excellent cure rates, and NCI notes the risk of acute leukemia at 10 years after ABVD "appears to be less than 1%."

SEER's outcome figures show how far this has come. Five-year relative survival is now 89.3% overall. By stage it runs 92.7% for stage I, 95.4% for stage II, 87.7% for stage III, and 82.8% for stage IV.

Note that stage IV Hodgkin lymphoma still carries survival above 80%. That is unlike almost any other stage IV cancer.

The problem that comes with cure

Because most patients survive, the field's hardest problem is what happens 20 years later.

NCI states it bluntly: "by 15 to 20 years after therapy, the cumulative mortality from a second malignancy, cardiovascular disease, or pulmonary fibrosis exceeds the cumulative mortality" from the lymphoma itself.

The second-cancer numbers are specific. Risk of a second solid tumor is about 13% at 15 years, 17% at 20 years, 22% at 25 years, and 48% at 40 years. Heart damage and infertility are the other major long-term concerns.

This is why modern treatment tries to give the least therapy that still cures, and why survivors need lifelong follow-up rather than a discharge letter. If you or someone you love was treated for Hodgkin lymphoma years ago, ask which long-term screening applies.

The historical arc

SEER's own record shows the shift. In 1975, five-year relative survival for Hodgkin lymphoma was about 70%. By 1985, the year Maris died, it had reached roughly 81%. It now stands near 89%.

Those are population figures spanning decades and thousands of people. They describe how a whole field changed. They do not predict any one person's course.

Sources

• https://www.cancer.gov/types/lymphoma/hp/adult-hodgkin-treatment-pdq
• https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/hodg.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/sports/1985/12/15/baseballs-roger-maris-dies-of-cancer-at-51/4c3aaed3-674c-4cde-9c3a-0d9c9248c114/
• https://www.cancer.org/research/cancer-facts-statistics.html