Mantle Tries New Kind of Comeback : Baseball: Hall of Fame outfielder speaks of new chance at life while making first appearance since liver transplant.

Mickey Mantle talked Tuesday about regrets and luck and how sorrowful he feels that he has squandered so much of his life. But with humility and the good humor that always seemed to carry him through his darkest days, he also vowed “to try and pay back” all the blessings he has received.

“I guess everybody knows I’ve been so lucky in my life,” he said slowly, at a news conference at the Baylor University Medical Center. “I’ll never be able to pay it all back, but as soon as I get to feeling better I’m sure going to try.”

It was a poignant day for Mantle’s first appearance since the life-saving, and, in some quarters, controversial, liver transplant he received on June 8--a consequence of a lifetime of drinking and carousing.

“One of the things I wish I had taken more seriously,” he said, “was the All-Star Game. It was always like a party day.” Later, he told a story of flying from Dallas to Anaheim, for one all-star outing that lasted 16 innings, arriving from the airport in time to run out on the field and strike out, then hopping on the same plane back to Dallas to rejoin his friends at the bar.

Mantle’s speech had the tone of both a confession and a rebirth. On May 28, when he entered Baylor with a hugely swollen abdomen and bone-crushing pain, doctors surmised that Mantle was dying of three potentially fatal ailments: liver cancer, cirrhosis, and hepatitis. He had, at most, two weeks to live.

Placed on an emergency list for liver donors, a high-priority situation where the wait is about three days, Mantle was criticized by some who thought his celebrity status ensured preferential treatment. His doctors and donor agencies have repeatedly stressed that was not the case. “I can tell you with all honesty, we played it straight by the book,” said Robert Goldstein, the doctor who performed the transplant.

“If anything, his celebrity status went against him because we were so very careful to cross our T’s and dot our I’s,” said Dan DeMarcos, another attending physician. “He doesn’t like hearing that [he got special consideration]. Over 1,100 transplants have been performed here, and he’s one of them.”

The only time Mantle’s easy-going manner slipped was when reporters asked how he felt about the criticism, sharply referring all such questions to the doctors. He did not flinch, however, in admitting once again that he had hastened his own decline.

Mantle spoke of the 20,000 cards he has received, of his family’s support, and his determination once he recovers to work on behalf of the Baylor organ-donor program. Asked if he would be willing to donate organs himself, Mantle laughed and said he doubted if he had “anything good to give. Everything I’ve got’s worn out. . . . A lot of people have said they would like to have my heart, though--because it’s never been used.”

He said he has not met with the family of the donor, but has an unsurpassed gratitude for their thoughtfulness. “They saved my life, and probably five more,” he said, referring to other organs that went to patients. “Every family that does that, it should make them feel real good.”

Since Mantle’s transplant became public, officials with the Southwest Organ Bank in Dallas said they have received thousands of requests for donor cards; the average had been about 10 a week.

Pointing to his youngest son, Danny, Mantle recalled that with his four sons, “I wasn’t like a father. I was a drinking buddy with them, and now that’s changed. Now I’m like a father.” He and his wife of many years, Merlyn, are separated. Billy, the third of his four sons, died of a heart attack at the age of 36.

He had been bedridden in his Dallas home for a week, Mantle said, when his family rushed him to Baylor.

He said with a laugh that he made some unintentionally funny remarks, as he was coming out from under the fog of sedation. “I said, ‘Hey, everybody from 1961’s dead, huh?’ I was saying some weird stuff. . . . Yogi [Berra] was going to come to my funeral, because he was afraid I wouldn’t come to his.”

He has lost 40 pounds, he said, and can only stand 15 minutes a day on the treadmill. “There is a chance of--what do you call it?” he consulted the doctors, “rejection, but I think I’m going to make it. I always think I’m going to make it.”

In that way, as in so many other ways, he was still the Mickey Mantle of old, the tarnished hero who still, perhaps, has one comeback left in him.

“God gave me the ability to play baseball. God gave me everything,” he said. “For the kids out there, this is a role model--don’t be like me.”