DUTY CALLS

Rod Carew blurted out the answer before I even had a chance to ask the question. While holding open the door to a restaurant, he said, without prompting, “I’m ready to go back to work.”

That’s all I wanted to know. I had wondered, did he really want to return to his job as the Angels’ hitting instructor and spend the next eight months trying to help guys hit a ball with a bat, even though none of them will be able to do it with the regularity he did during his 19-year career in the majors? Can it still be fulfilling?

Did he really want to deal with this occupation now that he devotes so much time to his obligation--aiding bone-marrow registration drives, raising awareness of leukemia, comforting other families that must wage the fight against the disease that took the life of his daughter, Michelle, almost two years ago?

If anything, those hours around the batting cage are his release.

“It’s therapeutic and it’s fun,” Carew said. “I enjoy it. I enjoy doing what I do. I love teaching and I like seeing the guys do well, especially when you’re seeing guys do well and it makes them successful. That’s where I get joy.”

He’ll take the joy wherever he can find it, because there’s still so much pain. They told him it would subside over time. It hasn’t. It has been almost 22 months since Michelle died and it won’t stop hurting.

Sometimes he gets so frustrated he will get in his truck and drive--all the way to San Diego, if necessary--with the sunroof open, talking to Michelle the whole time.

And the work in her name doesn’t stop either. He estimates he has made 25 appearances this off-season.

“Whenever they want me to go,” Carew said. “Someplace for the blood drive or the recruitment drive for donors, people to get involved in the marrow program. They call and want me to talk to someone who just has leukemia or is having a problem with it. I do, because when my daughter was ill, that’s something she made me promise her that I would do.

“She said to me, ‘Daddy, no matter what happens to me, if I make it or don’t make it, I want you to keep trying for the other people that are sick with this.’

“This is her wish. So I do it. Sometimes, people ask me, how can you stay so close to it? But I think if I didn’t do it, I’d be going against what she wanted and I wouldn’t feel good about myself.

“Part of it is, you get your rewards. I’ve seen big smiles when I walk in a room and sign an autograph. Kids that might only have a day or two days to live.

“It makes you feel good, that at least you’re able to see their teeth and see them grin.”

It’s to the point now that Carew doesn’t know any other way. The Anaheim Black Chamber of Commerce invited him to speak today. When Carew asked what topics he should address, they told him: the upcoming season, the renovated ballpark, the effect of baseball on the community.

“That was like the furthest thing on my mind,” Carew said. “Here I was, about to get ready to give a speech about us getting more involved . . . but I’m going to sneak it in somehow.”

It’s his duty.

“And it’s a request,” he said. “Her request to me.

“This kid was so committed to helping other people. It was amazing. She was so fun-loving. A free spirit. She wanted to help heal the world.”

Carew’s wife, Marilyn, and daughters Charryse and Stephanie still take insects out of the house instead of crushing them, because it’s what Michelle taught them. They recycle their newspapers.

Even as the 18-year-old Michelle’s health worsened, she was helping. Her and her family’s public, candid discussions of her illness helped spark a surge in donor registration. But minorities and people of mixed race still are under-represented, prompting Carew to press on.

Now it’s February. Spring training. Pitchers and catchers report this week.

And for Carew, the focus slowly shifts back to baseball. He already has received permission from the Angels to leave spring training for three events.

“I don’t want to do too much, because I don’t want it to interfere with my work,” Carew said. “That’s something I’ve tried to tell different [charitable] organizations, once I started working, that it has to be the way I can schedule it.

“This is my job. I have to be here. This is important to me also.”

Carew interviewed with the Arizona Diamondbacks during the off-season, but the expansion team was preparing for the expansion draft.

“There was no communication there,” Carew said.

So Carew returned to the Angels and now he returns to work, balancing a career and a mission that both seem so daunting. Even his best hitting pupils will be out seven of 10 times. And even his most impassioned pleas and most successful registration efforts don’t always result in the right blood types to save lives.

Carew remembers the worst slump of his career--0 for 17. And he remembers breaking out of it by going 19 for 26. His swing, the one that resulted in 3,053 hits, practically ensured a turnaround. That seems easy, compared to his task now.

“It’s hard,” Carew said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m beating my head against the wall. But then I’ll get a report that they got a match for five more kids. And there’s five more that have been given a chance.”