Remy will make full-time return to booth Thursday

FORT MYERS — Red Sox announcer Jerry Remy will make his return to broadcasting this week.

Remy recently underwent treatment for cancer - the fifth time he's been diagnosed. Getting back for Opening Day was his goal, but Remy will be back in the booth this Thursday for the Sox Spring Training game against the Baltimore Orioles. He will also be announcing games this Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday before he heads to Tampa for the regular season opener against the Rays.

"Well, you know it's like pitchers getting ready for their first start of the season - you gotta build up your word count. You know pitchers go a couple of innings then they go four innings or five innings. You know, I'll go 40 words maybe then up to 60 then 90. But seriously, it's just to get back in form of doing games and getting comfortable behind the mic and I've been looking forward to this for a long time so I can't wait until Thursday," Remy told Boston 25 Sports Director Tom Leyden.

Remy stepped away from announcing due to the cancer. It's been a long year with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, but he says he's feeling much better.

"It's obviously not a pleasant experience what I've been through," said Remy. "I gotta admit it felt very good to get back down here in Florida. What I really needed to do was some walking to get back in shape a little bit. I've been walking around the ballpark quite a bit to try and get my wind back because I had radiation and that kind of takes a lot out of your lungs. So, with that and the good weather - the combination of that - I feel much stronger now than I did just three weeks ago, so I'm really looking forward to baseball."

Remy said his diagnosis was hard, but his love for baseball and his job helped him get through the tough times.

"One thing that kept me going through all of this is the fact that I have a great job that I love to do and I love bringing baseball games back to the folks of Boston and New England so it's one of the things you think about when you're going through tough times is that you wanna get back to doing what you enjoy And I'm finally gonna get back to doing that on Thursday," said Remy.

But it wasn't just his job that helped him through; Remy says the strength of the people also going through something similar had a big impact.

"The interesting thing is that you're in there with a lot of people with a lot of courage and you look to your left and you look to your right and there's somebody that's in probably worse shape than you are. So the strength of these people who go through these type of things is just incredible to me and they gave me an awful lot of strength going through it myself," said Remy. "I never felt depressed about what I was going through and I think a lot of that had to do with the people that surrounded me; family, obviously, and the people around me in the hospitals, doctors."

Remy is going into his 31st season announcing Red Sox games. He says while he never imagined this job would have turned into a career, he's thankful to Red Sox nation for all of the support over the years.

"It's obvious that I love my job and I think the people sense that. We go into people's homes every day of the season and you become part of the family. Sometimes we forget about that - we're on this side of the camera, but on the other side of the camera they feel like you're a part of the family and so that's the big thing," said Remy.

Remy will be announcing 115 games this season, including five spring training games. He says NESN has set up a schedule where he is not making the trip to the west coast in April, which he thinks is a really good thing. He's happy to be doing most of the games, but it's a long season, and he says a little break every once in a while is nice.

"The days of me doing 162 [games] I mean, those days are gone. I can't imagine going back to doing that," said Remy.

Since arriving in Florida on March 1, Remy says David Price has been a standout in his mind. He says he is looking like the David Price we remember from the Rays, Tigers and Blue Jays.

You can watch the Red Sox take on the Rays in Tampa this Thursday on Boston 25 News at 1 p.m. That will be Remy's first game back.

"I'm just anxious to get back to not being bored - and to be able to do some baseball games."

>> MORE: 'Back for Opening Day': Remy opens up about cancer battle on Boston 25

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