MIAMI -- Mike Lowell feared cancer had returned. He happily learned he was wrong.

	Lowell

"I was very scared, and that's an understatement,'' the third baseman said Monday before returning to the Florida Marlins' lineup.

In 1999, Lowell had surgery for testicular cancer after a small mass was found during a routine physical examination.

He felt soreness in his groin the last three weeks, then took Friday's game off to see a doctor. Lowell left a hospital on crutches after being told that a golf ball-sized mass above his left femur might be a tumor that could be eating at the bone.

He then went to tumor specialists in Gainesville, Fla.

"On the way up to Gainesville it was with the honest best-case scenario being a benign tumor, surgery, a possible steel rod in the hip, and miss this year,'' he said. "That what I was hoping was my best-case scenario.''

Additional tests by the specialists determined the mass was not a tumor or cancerous. Doctors said it was fibrous dysplasia.

"It's a benign condition of the bone, something they say I might have had since I was 4 years old,'' Lowell said. "We just started jumping up and down like I had won the lottery. Everyone was crying. I went from thinking I had to go chemotherapy or radiation again, to doing nothing, that I had had a normal strain. I don't care about the strain now, that's the least of my worries now.''

Lowell was back in the lineup Monday after missing the weekend series against the Chicago Cubs. He singled and drove in a run in his first at-bat.

Before seeing the doctor on Friday, Lowell had been in a 3-for-33 slump -- all three hits were homers.

"The game is going to be easy compared to all he's been through the last three days,'' teammate Derrek Lee said. "I don't think he's going to be out there putting a lot of pressure on himself. I think he's just going to go out and have fun tonight.''

Manager Jack McKeon said that having Lowell back in the clubhouse was an uplifting experience.

"I know that when the word came out that there was no cancer involved, it was a tremendous relief to all of us. When you've had someone go through this, you know what it's like,'' said McKeon, whose wife battled breast cancer while he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Lowell said he will play through the groin strain.

"To become 100 percent, I might need a lot of rest, but I'm not a base stealer anyway,'' he said. "It doesn't hurt to hit or to throw. It bothers me a little, but I don't think anyone feels 100 percent at this time of year, anyway.''