Butler Is Making Another Sacrifice for Family Time

The little boy with the big glasses knocks the ball into the red Georgia clay and sprints to first base.

“Look at that, look at that, would you look at that!”

The voice is raspy, but the man behind it is determined, running across a diamond at Shorty Howell Park with his arms waving and face beaming.

Look at that, indeed.

Brett Butler’s 10-year-old son Blake has just laid down a perfect bunt.

The most perfect thing being, Butler was there to watch it.

Not to worry, you thousands who cheered him, screamed at him, loved him, hated him, prayed for him, and ultimately made him one of the most popular Dodgers this decade.

Not to worry, those who thought he would be stained by last year’s crummy finish to a 16-year career.

Brett Butler has gone to a better place.

One that involves carpools.

“You talk about having to hustle,” he said, smiling.

One that involves youth league coaching.

“I tell the kids I have three rules--hustle, trust the coach, and be on time,” he said. “Although, I guess the parents probably have something to do with them being on time.”

For 16 years, as one of the most consistent and durable leadoff hitters of the modern era, Butler was the classic overachieving little guy.

Now he wants to be the classic overachieving father.

“I sit around today and think, ‘Why would anybody work who didn’t have to work?’ ” he said. “Why would anybody leave their families if they didn’t have to?”

Where he sits around is a 12,000 square-foot mansion in this north Georgia suburb.

The exterior, adorned with white Roman-style pillars, was designed by Butler. The interior, a marble and richly-carpeted showplace, was decorated by wife Eveline.

Yet, typically, when asked how many bathrooms are in the joint, Butler has to stop and count.

On this Friday night, he is busy on the phone with 15-year-old daughter Abbi. She is late, and she is hearing about it from her father.

“The hardest part about my career was that our family never had the consistency that you get with two parents being around all the time,” said Butler, who has four children. “Now we do. Now, I’m part of everything, like a father should be.”

Is he ever. He helps coach son Blake’s baseball and basketball teams, while sitting in the stands for all of his roller hockey games.

On a recent Friday night at a suburban rink, he was that raspy-voiced Dad standing on the bleachers swinging a water bottle. (He had throat cancer, remember?)

Two of his three daughters are school cheerleaders. Last week he drove 80 miles just to cheer with one of them.

His other daughter is a budding artist, gonna be one of the all-time greats to hear him tell it.

Some recently retired baseball players don’t miss the relatively early hours of spring training, when you often report to work by 8 a.m.

Butler longs for a schedule that easy.

He is up by 6 a.m., in the jeep by 7:15, and usually does not finish running the kids all over town until just before he falls asleep at 10.

For the average mom or dad, this is not news. For a baseball player just months from the luxury of a major-league life, this is darn near historic.

Butler said he might eventually be interested in a stay-at-home job with the Atlanta Braves front office if it was offered. But at least for this season, he’s having too much fun driving the kids crazy.

“It’s weird having him around all the time,” said Abbi, the oldest. “Before, when he wasn’t home much, if we told him we wanted something, he would say sure.

“Now he’s like, ‘Wait a minute.’ He’s like, disciplining us.’ ”

Butler hears this and smiles. This new job is a lot more fun than his last job, sitting on the bench at the end of last season as the Dodgers collapsed again.

“I looked around, and saw the younger kids, and the attitudes, and I realized, I was glad I was quitting when I did,” he said.

Not to mention, he could barely lift his arms.

Finishing with the determination that made him a fan favorite--he led the team in Dodger Stadium standing ovations--Butler played the final months with more pain than anyone imagined.

To prove it, one only had to sit in on his recent shoulder surgeries. Doctors opened him up and discovered that he had amazingly played last season despite two torn labrum, two torn rotator cuffs and one torn biceps.

“He was either going to retire, or die first,” wife Eveline said with a laugh. “Because I was going to shoot him.”

Seemingly always near the center of some clubhouse turmoil--teammates thought he was too self-centered, he often thought they didn’t care enough--Butler also seems to enjoy the seclusion of retirement.

When he applied to help coach his son’s baseball team, the league commissioner asked him to fill out a form and list his baseball experience without initially realizing who Butler was.

“It’s the most important job in the world, being a dad,” Butler said. “I’m just glad I still have a chance to do it.”

For now, anyway, it’s just him, his wife, his children, his two long and yelping dogs. . . . and his water bottles.

Yes, he still carries the trademark water bottles, because his saliva glands still don’t work properly after throat cancer treatment.

While driving between basketball and baseball practice the other day, he had to rush into a mini-mart for some bottled water because his throat suddenly became dry.

Although May 20 marks the two-year anniversary of the discovery of his cancer--and the odds are against a recurrence at this point--he still constantly feels his throat for tumors.

The kids watch him and giggle.

“They say, ‘Look, look, it’s back, the cancer,” Eveline said.

She laughs, Brett laughs, Abbie laughs, all sitting around their family room on this cozy Friday night. The TV displays the score of the Dodgers’ first exhibition game, but nobody notices.

Often it is a cliche to say that a retiring baseball player is safe at home. Sometimes it is not.