Dick Vitale broke into tears while speaking of his most recent battle with cancer during Duke’s 73062 win over Louisville in the ACC Championship on Saturday.
The 85-year-old ESPN college basketball analyst announced that he was cancer-free in December after his fourth battle with the disease in just over three years.
Seated next to Dave O’Brien and Cory Alexander, Vitale could not contain himself as he looked into the camera to wrap up his final game on-call this season.
‘I also wanna thank you guys, the way you’ve accepted me,’ Vitale said. ‘Coming here and joining you, it’s been a great thrill for me. I get emotional.’
‘This is my last game this year. Praying, I hope I could be back next year. Hope and pray my doctor really helps me and my voice,’ he added.
Vitale’s colleagues told him that he sounded great during the game. After expressing his gratitude before going on about the diagnosis.
Dick Vitale broke into tears while saying his thanks at the ACC title game amid his cancer battle
‘Thank you, I appreciate it. I have to listen to my doctor, right now he told me, ‘voice rest’. I wanna thank the fans and all the people [who] have been so beautiful. All my people at ESPN, tolerating and putting up for me with the issues I had. All of you have been so good to me, I can’t thank you enough.’
‘It’s been like, to me, a miracle, really, to sit here with you guys. I can’t tell you how much you meant to me. It’s been unbelievable…Cancer sucks.’
‘Anybody battling cancer, please listen, think positive always, and have faith,’ Vitale told viewers. ‘And if you know somebody with cancer, send them a message. Send them a phone call. The bottom line [is] it means so much, I know it meant a lot to me in my darkest moments when I was in the hospital doing chemo.’
Vitale underwent surgery last summer to remove cancerous lymph nodes from his neck. Before then, he was treated for melanoma and lymphoma and had radiation treatments last year for vocal cord cancer.
The Basketball Hall of Famer has been with ESPN since the network launched in 1979. He coached in college and the NBA before calling the first college basketball broadcast for ESPN.
Furthermore, Vitale is a longtime fundraiser for cancer research and helped his friend Jim Valvano to the stage at the 1993 ESPY’s, where Valvano gave his famous ‘Don’t Give Up’ Speech. Less than two months later, Valvano died of adenocarcinoma.
