Forward we go. And yet I smile.

If I’m allowed to brag for a second, my city league softball team used to rule this town. OK, the reign of terror for my company’s softball team was brief, but those dudes could play. The GoPowercat.com team went from a good lower league squad to the city’s best, proving one thing: Considering I had hung up my glove by the time the team was great, I was a far better general manager than player.

The fraternity of our team was the highlight, though. We were a group of guys ranging in age from early 20s through early 40s, and those doubleheaders every Monday night through the summer were spectacular. Or maybe it was the beer and conversation that were best. It doesn’t really matter. Brotherhood is brotherhood.

All I know is we competed without being total city league softball asshats. If you ever have played, you know the type. They roll into the fields with their expensive bat bags, filled with expensive bats, sporting lavish egos and taking the entire city league softball thing way too seriously.

Don’t get me wrong, those guys were typically good. You better be if you’re going to drop a couple hundred dollars on a bat that could break at any moment. They were also typically dicks, but even when you’re playing against them, you’re sometimes wowed by their ability to hit a ball a remarkable distance at a frightening velocity. This is particularly true when you’re the one lobbing the ball as a pitcher, which was my role on said team prior to retirement.

These guys also took competition a little too far at times by trying to injure opposing players, even intentionally attempting to hit pitchers with batted balls, which has been known to kill people.

My team didn’t beat them at first, but eventually, we did more often than not, which didn’t sit well with men who acted as is their sole purpose on this Earth was to play city league softball four nights a week and then on weekends hit the road to play tournaments.

So, to recap, really good at what they do, take it way too seriously and you can’t help but admire them in some ways while wanting to beat the crap out of them at the same time.

Do you have an image of that particular breed of douche bag in your head?

Yeah, that’s my cancer.

Dammit, I want to kick this guy’s ass, but he’s really freaking good at what he does. Like that obsessed softball dude clinging to his youth, all my cancer thinks about is playing his game, and this jerk is whistling line drives back at me. And there’s no mistaking the truth: His intent is to kill me.

Yesterday was a particularly rough day. We’re going to give that one to cancer, but it’s just one day. After waiting a few days for blood test results, expecting, at worst, mediocre news, the news was, shall we say, less than ideal.

Prostate cancer is an infamously slow grower, cancer’s equivalent to a slow walk through your body. It’s a lower league team, usually easy to defeat. Not mine. No, mine is apparently hyper-competitive and damn good at what it does.

We know exactly when my PSA (Prostate-Specific Antigen) score moved from noteworthy to alarming, and within four months of that date, the cancer had devoured 70 percent of my prostate, cracked its outer shell and sent tentacles reaching out for a new host, climbing up the neck of my bladder.

My doc took out my prostate, but those tentacles reaching into my bladder were left behind because removing my bladder was the solution to that problem. I’d rather try to save my bladder because I keep stuff in it. (Speaking of which, I remain dismayed that my doctor refused to use the space that my prostate once filled for a convenient pouch to hold my key fob and maybe some mints.)

Anyway, since I no longer have a prostate, the presence of a PSA score represents the presence of cancerous prostate cells in other places, such as my bladder. I just scored my PSA twice, three weeks apart. The goal, of course, was zero. My score doubled in those three weeks, meaning those cells are quickly multiplying. This cancer is apparently relentless.

The good news is I’m still Stage 3 because there’s no evidence of cancer metastasizing in my lymph nodes or blood, but given time, it will get there. Still, Friday’s news was not good. Optimism is powerful and dangerous. I didn’t see this one coming. I let my guard down, and cancer struck an unexpected blow.

So, my team of docs put their heads together and decided we’re not going to give my cancer time. Hormone therapy started yesterday, and radiation treatments also will begin sooner than planned. It’s time to match the pace of this cancer, and, if needed, its fury.

I am certainly much less self-reflective than I was a few days ago. I’m pissed. And I am battling the urge to feel sorry for myself even though that serves no purpose, so I won’t. Instead, I will lean on a bit of pop culture for wisdom.

One of my favorite television series, The Walking Dead, found our heroes last season reeling from another epic battle, but the premise of the show (and graphic comic books upon which it is based) is that of common people put in impossible circumstances and still finding a way to survive.

The unexpected should be expected, so it becomes about how they deal with such tribulations. It resonates. Here I am, trying to exist in a world I did not foresee even six months ago, and now I’m clinging to a sense of normalcy.

I’ve said since the opening salvo of this battle with cancer that my motto will be “Forward we go.” I can only control what I can control. Trite, I know, but so true. Just keep going forward toward victory.

There was one particular scene last season on The Walking Dead that stuck with me, and this was long before I knew of my cancer. A centerpiece character, a former zoo employee named Ezekiel, saved a tiger that never left his side until its own demise. Ezekiel reinvented himself in this post-apocalyptic world as “The King,” a leader who speaks in flowery prose that, honestly, sounds a bit too much like some of my writing if read out loud.

In this speech to his followers, all of whom are stinging from defeat, Ezekiel sets aside his own wounded pride by telling them that despite this dire day, there is hope, punctuating his dramatic words with the phrase, “And yet, I smile.”

His speech ends as such: "You trust The King. We will win. I smile. I laugh. I rejoice this day, for on this day we are joined in purpose and vision. We are of a singular heart and mind. On this day, we are one!"

My family, genetic and extended through the binds of fraternity, friendship, community, social media and, yes, medical, is strong. This is not a fight I face alone. I have one hell of a team, and I’m both the player and general manager in this life-and-death game with cancer, a worthy and dangerous opponent.

Yesterday I took a punch, and those around me, my family, my team, picked me up. So, forward we go, joined in purpose and vision.

And when other bad days twist this journey's path in a challenging direction, I will remember that fictional character who offered me a new motto from which I draw strength in times such as these.

And yet I smile.