Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010016
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-13 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CARL LEWIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It is named for Mickey Mantle, the baseball great, and there could be no better way to carry on his memory. Carry it on, that is, in a way that will help so many others, in a way that will actually save lives.
Mantle, of course, spent his entire adult life in the public eye. Most people will remember him for hitting home runs and winning pennants with the New York Yankees. I will always think of him first for something else. Organ and tissue donation.
That is the focus of Mickey's Team: educating people about the desperate need for organ and tissue donors.
More than 41,000 people in the United States alone are waiting for an organ transplant, most of them needing a new kidney or liver or heart to survive. Each and every day, on average, eight of those people die waiting. A staggering statistic.
Mantle, in a sense, was among the fortunate. On June 8, having been sentenced to death by a terrifying triumvirate of cirrhosis, hepatitis and cancer, Mantle was granted a sweet reprieve in the form of a new liver.
The severity of his condition - not his celebrity status but the severity of his condition - had allowed him to move swiftly up the waiting list for a donor organ.
Unfortunately, there was more cancer than tests had revealed. With the immune system intentionally and necessarily suppressed to lessen the chances of rejecting the new liver, the cancer roared back with a vengeance, and Mantle died Aug. 13.
His story was already generating much-needed attention for organ and tissue donation, with donor banks nationwide reporting substantial increases in the number of requests for donor cards.
Now, though, now that the Mantle family and friends are so committed to the cause, I have to think the story of Mickey Mantle will prove to be the single most significant development to date, ever, in the public campaign for donors.
It was that commitment by the family - wife Merlyn and sons Danny, David and Mickey Jr. - that brought us together recently in Dallas. It was just two days after the funeral. Two days after Mantle friend and country singer Roy Clark shared his hit, ``Yesterday When I was Young,'' with the crowd of mourners:
``I teased at life as if it were a foolish game ... ''
``Only now I see how years ran away ... ''
The lyrics resonated as a cautionary reminder that Mantle was defined not only by fame and fortune but also, like the rest of us, by flaws and failures. In fact, he had repeatedly apologized during the final year of his life - once sober - for the excessive drinking that had landed him in rehab.
Now, though, it was time to reach beyond the sadness of that issue. Now the point was taking an unspeakable negative and doing whatever possible to turn it right around into something positive.
That is how I came to spend the morning with the Mantles and their attorney, Roy True, also one of their closest friends. Knowing of my longtime interest in organ and tissue donation, they were kind enough to invite me to work with them.
I was honored to join them at Baylor University Medical Center, where Mantle was treated, for the announcement of Mickey's Team. It will be part of the new Mickey Mantle Foundation, which will also help endow a research bench (not a ``chair'' but a ``bench'') for transplant surgery.
The team's initial project will be the distribution of millions of special organ donor cards designed to look like baseball trading cards. The first million, bearing the likeness of Mantle and a reproduction of his autograph, will be handed out at baseball stadiums across the country during the Labor Day weekend.
Mrs. Mantle and the sons said that this had been one of Mickey's final wishes. In his final days, he had even helped design the cards and wrote a personal message to be printed on them:
``I guess you could say I got another time at bat. ... I'll never be able to make up all I owe God and the American people. But if you will join me in supporting the cause of organ donation, it would be a great start.''
We will design similar cards with my picture and signature for distribution leading up to the 1996 Olympics. And we are hoping other sports figures will join the effort.
It was a very emotional day for me - especially when the Mantle sons were talking about carrying out the wishes of their father. That was when my thoughts drifted back to 1987, when I lost my own father to cancer.
Shortly before he died, my father told me: Keep running. Keep doing what you do best. And I'll always be watching.
That gave me a cause. Four years later, in Tokyo, when I broke the world record for the 100-meter dash, I thought of those words and knew that my father had to be watching. I knew that he had to be proud.
I told the Mantles that they too now had a cause - and one far more important than running down a track. What they were beginning to do, reaching out to help others, reaching out on behalf of Mickey, is something he will always know they are doing. It is something of which he will always be proud.
Being with the Mantles also made me think about a special friend of mine, Wendy Marx. In fact, I was joining Mickey's Team in my role as co-founder and director of the Wendy Marx Foundation for Organ Donor Awareness.
Wendy is a vibrant young woman, 28 years old, happy and healthy, who also happens to be a liver transplant recipient. In 1989, her first year out of college, I held her hand and stood by her hospital bed while she lay still and silent in a coma. Her liver had been destroyed by Hepatitis B. It got to the point where the doctors were saying she had 24 hours to live.
Then came the Gift of Life: an organ donor and successful transplant surgery. Six months later, we formed a nonprofit, entirely volunteer foundation with a single purpose: to help increase public awareness of the need for organ and tissue donors.
On behalf of the Wendy Marx Foundation, I was pleased to present the Mantles with a contribution of $25,000 to help with printing and distribution of the special donor cards. And that was only the beginning. We look forward to a long and meaningful relationship with the family.
I'm certainly not a baseball expert. Best I can tell, though, this Mickey's Team looks like a grand slam for the thousands and thousands of families who will be touched for years to come.
Carl Lewis, winner of eight Olympic gold medals in track and field, is co-founder of the Wendy Marx Foundation for Organ Donor Awareness.
- Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service
by CNB