CUMBERLAND — It didn’t matter too much to Tony Lonero that he was more than 90 minutes late getting to Cumberland from Rome, Italy, Friday night. It didn’t matter his sleep would be cut short if he was to be ready for his 150-mile bike ride on the Great Allegheny Passage to Pittsburgh beginning at 1:30 a.m. Saturday.

That’s because Lonero, 49, originally from Penn Hills, Pa., near Pittsburgh, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis seven years ago. After a few months living with the disease, his condition worsened. Lonero, who made a career in baseball and represented Italy in the 1984 Olympic Games, soon lost the use of both his feet and his right arm. His speech was slurred.

According to a local newspaper article in 2004, Lonero was “mad at the world, mad at God” upon learning of his medical condition.

Early Saturday morning — minutes before setting off on a grueling pace of better than 15 mph on arguably the most difficult portion of the journey up Big Savage Mountain — Lonero said he also was mad at his mother, JoAnn Bary.

That’s because Bary bought Lonero a bike. A cherry red, Sept. 11 edition Cannondale road racer, manufactured in Bedford, Pa., and shipped to Rome by his mother.

“It was the strangest thing,” said Lonero, bundled up for a cool early autumn ride along the trail with nine others for the Pittsburgh 250 Legacy Trail Ride, a cycling event from Washington to Pittsburgh with relay riders carrying a proclamation from Congress inside a metal tube with “Pittsburgh 250” inscribed on the side, in honor of the city’s 250th anniversary. “Actually, I was pretty mad.”

For Lonero, it was personal. MS results in decreased nerve function and leads to a wide spectrum of symptoms, including the inability to control one’s own muscles. It was those same muscles in the same legs that had powered his ability to jump from a squatting position behind home plate and throw out a would-be base stealer.

Some eight months after being hit with the news of having five inflamed lesions — four in his brain and one in his spinal fluid — Lonero and his wife, Mimma, rode their bicycles together.

The brief ride sparked a positive feeling and doctors told him to participate in any activity which makes him feel good. A year after showing symptoms of MS, he entered an 85-mile bike race in Rome and finished last — but finished.

It was like opening the floodgates. Gradually, the feeling in Lonero’s feet and right arm began to return. He entered a 745-mile race around Paris considered the second most difficult race in the world. Again, he finished, and soon afterward created his own racing team, Ride to Finish.

“This is the last part,” Lonero said in the parking lot of Canal Place Heritage Area, where an Italian film crew was putting the finishing touches on a documentary on Lonero’s life.

As he completes this bike trip, it’s likely just the end of one challenge, smaller in comparison to most Lonero’s faced, as he pedals his way over the next mountaintop.

Bary, though, won’t be riding with him again. Saturday was the first time they’d ever ridden together, Bary said. In fact, she stopped at Frostburg — about 16 miles — and rode in a vehicle the rest of the way.

“He’s out of my league,” she said.

Whether Bary’s along for the ride or not, Lonero has a simple motto he now lives each day by: “Don’t stop till the end.”

Contact Kevin Spradlin at kspradlin@times-news.com.