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.

Wearing a baseball cap and a black windbreaker suit, Mantle smiled often and his eyes sometimes shone wetly as he spoke of the 20,000 cards he has received, of his family’s fond support, and his determination once he fully recovers to work on behalf of the Baylor organ-donor program. Asked if he would be willing to donate any 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.

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He said he has not met with the family of the donor victim, 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 other patients. Every family that does that, it should make them feel real good.

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

In his 18-year reign from 1951 to the beginning of the 1969 season, in an era of gentler press coverage, Mantle was nonetheless well-known, along with fellow Yankees Whitey Ford and Billy Martin, for his wild embrace of the New York nightlife. He played hung over and he played injured, and he managed to hit 536 home runs and become a Hall-of-Fame legend, but his family life suffered. And, he wasn’t all that happy.

Pointing to his youngest son, Danny, who accompanied him Tuesday, 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.

Along with his Sports Illustrated revelations last year, Mantle also did a successful stint at the Betty Ford Center. It was a crucial emotional turning point, but the damage to his body was done. He had been bed-ridden in his Dallas home for a week, he said, when his family rushed him to Baylor. He was too sick to know he was on the brink of death.

He said with a laugh that he made some unintentionally funny remarks, mostly baseball-related, as he was coming out from under the fog of sickness and 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 ofwhat 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.

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In that way, as in so many other ways, he was still the Mickey Mantle of old, the Oklahoma boy who took Manhattan by storm, the tarnished hero who still, perhaps, has one last 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 modeldon’t be like me.