Get Well Jim Mandich

As many of you know, Jim "Mad Dog" Mandich has been off the air for several months, and recently announced he has cancer. Those of us who run websites about the Miami Dolphins decided to create a website to wish him a speedy recovery. Please join us in encouraging him to get well soon. We each have links on this site to our own thoughts and comments. But please feel free to add your own in our "Messages for Mad Dog!"

by: Andy Cohen  (courtesy of) MiamiDolphins.com  March 10, 2010

Jim Mandich is battling cancer. The words are hard to write, even harder to say. This is one of the classiest people I have ever known. To say he’s my friend really doesn’t carry that much weight because Jim Mandich probably has more friends than anyone I will ever know.

But don’t pity him today; simply pray for him. Root for him the way he roots for the Miami Dolphins. With an unyielding passion.

If there is anyone I know who can beat this thing, who will fight that cancer until he can slam dunk it out of his body, it is Jim Mandich. He is relentless in everything he does and this is no different. Jim Mandich is a winner – on the football field, in his personal life, in so many charitable endeavors – and if there is any way he can conquer this awful demon, I just know that he will.

You know him as one of the radio voices of the Miami Dolphins, as an afternoon drive time host on WQAM, as a former tight end with the Dolphins, as a former All-American at Michigan, as the founder and host of the very popular Dolphins Touchdown Club.

But what you may not know is that the Miami Dolphins – from the top of the front office to the bottom of the depth chart -- have never had a better friend, a more vocal supporter, a teammate who looks out for his former teammates, and even former Dolphins he never played with, in such a caring, tireless manner.

If you are a former Dolphins player and you are going through tough times, financially or personally, you have no doubt felt the kindness of Jim Mandich’s touch. One of the main reasons for starting The Touchdown Club was to build a financial reservoir to take care of struggling former teammates. He has raised thousands of dollars – well into six figures – since starting the club.

“It is for them that I do this,” Mandich has said many times at The Touchdown club.

Mandich, 61, is receiving chemotherapy for a tumor in his bile duct, which is near his liver and small intestines. The hope is that the chemo can reduce the tumor to the point where surgery is possible. Mandich has told some of his closest friends that he will beat this thing and who could possibly doubt him? While he is finished with his daily radio show, he remains hopeful to continue as a color analyst on the Dolphins radio network this fall.

And nobody calls a Dolphins game quite like Jim Mandich. He’ll tell you he’s a homer. He’ll tell you about his friendships within the organization. But he’ll also tell you exactly the way he sees it, criticize when it is justified, moan over bad breaks and, when the moment is just right, when the Dolphins do something out of the ordinary on a sun-splashed Sunday afternoon, he will take a deep breath and bellow at the top of his lungs: “ALRIGHT MIAMI!!!!!!”

Don Shula loves to tell the same story over and over again, how Jim Mandich showed up at his office in the summer of 1970, the first pick of the Dolphins, 29th overall, driving a beat-up old Studabaker, Mandich’s shoulder length hair way too long and unruly for Shula’s world.

“YOU’RE MY FIRST PICK?” Shula recalls saying.

Mandich and Shula laugh about it today. They laugh because of what Mandich became as a player and a human being, because today the long hair is neatly cropped and that rogue of a football player is as polished a person as you’ll ever meet. They laugh because today, 40 years later, they are close friends, the former coach and that Michigan kid.

The Miami Dolphins have a lot of different faces these days. Important faces. They have a new owner, a new CEO, one of the most powerful football minds in Bill Parcells and a young quarterback brimming with potential. But, in so many ways, Jim Mandich still epitomizes what this franchise is really all about.

Three very important C’s: Commitment, Class, Caring.

Get well, Jim. You’re going to beat this. And sometime this fall, we’re all going to hear “ALRIGHT MIAMI!!” blasting over the radio and we’ll all know then that everything is just the way it should be once again.