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Number 29.
He was one of the best pure hitters ever.
Man, could he hit.
And he made it look so effortless.
He’d settle into the batter’s box with a wad of chew in his mouth, crouch low, bring the bat back.
Then came those quick hands.
A flick of the wrists, and Carew would slap the ball all over the diamond.
“I get a kick out of watching a team defense me. A player moves two steps in one direction and I hit it two steps the other way. It goes right by his glove and I laugh.”
In 1977, he had us all watching as he chased .400 deep into the summer.
He fell short—if you call batting .388 falling short—and was named the American League MVP.
19 seasons.
3,053 hits
Watch Carew get his 3000th hit
Seven batting titles.
Eighteen straight All-Star selections.
A lifetime average of .328.
Pretty, pretty good.
And in 1991: The Hall of Fame.
On the field, Carew made it look easy.
Life after baseball would be anything but.
What Happened To Rod Carew?
Even in retirement, Carew never really left baseball.
He went to work with the Angels as their hitting coach, mentoring the next generation of hitters.
Then, in 1995, everything changed.
Carew’s youngest daughter, Michelle, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.
She was 17.
She needed a bone marrow transplant.
But finding a match was difficult because of Michelle’s mixed ethnic background.
Her father is Black, with West Indian and Panamanian roots. Her mother, Marilynn, is white, with Russian-Jewish ancestry.
Carew went public, urging potential donors to come forward and be tested.
Within weeks, more than 70,000 calls came into the marrow program, many from ethnic minority communities responding to his plea.
The donor registry grew from 1.5 million potential donors to 2 million in about six months—a surge credited in large part to the Carews’ efforts.
But a matching bone marrow donor was never found.
Michelle Carew died in April 1996.
She was 18.
“For all her pains and discomforts, she was more concerned about her mom, her two sisters and her dad, always trying to cheer us up. She didn’t want us to cry.”
The loss devastated the Carew family.
In his memoir, One Tough Out: Fighting Off Life’s Curveballs, Carew wrote:
The demise and death of a teenage daughter either brings a husband and wife closer together or tears them apart. Michelle’s death tore us apart.
Carew and Marilynn separated and later divorced.
He also became estranged from his two surviving daughters, Charryse and Stephanie.
Tito Herrera
In 2000, while working as the Milwaukee Brewers’ hitting coach, Carew met Rhonda Fedden.
The two exchanged phone numbers.
The last four digits of her number were 3053.
Same as his career hit total, 3,053.
They married in 2001. Carew adopted her two children, Cheyenne and Devon.
Fourteen years later, Carew would be the one fighting for his life.
In 2015, days before his 70th birthday, Carew suffered a massive heart attack while playing golf in Southern California.
It was the kind commonly known as the “widow maker.”
He spent more than six weeks in the hospital and underwent several surgeries.
But the Hall of Famer was eventually told a transplant was his only option.
His name was added to the heart transplant waiting list.
And they waited.
I cried every night, every morning. I talked to him [God]. I cried to him, not looking for a miracle but looking for something to happen…”
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And that something did happen.
On December 16, 2016, Carew received a new heart and kidney.
The donor was Konrad Reuland, a former Baltimore Ravens tight end who died after suffering a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Reuland was 29 years old.
Twenty-nine.
Another sign?
The same number Carew wore throughout his 19-year major-league career.
But the number wasn’t their only connection.
When Reuland was 11, he attended the same middle school as Carew’s children.
One afternoon, he met the Hall of Famer.
When his mother picked him up, Konrad couldn’t stop talking about it. He told her he wanted to become a professional athlete, too.
He eventually did.
And in death, he saved the life of the man who helped inspire that dream.
In 2017, Carew met the Reuland family.
Mary Reuland greeted him with a hug.
Then Carew handed her a stethoscope.
She pressed it against his chest—and listened.
Her son’s heart was still beating.
Carew and Rhonda partnered with the American Heart Association on Heart of 29, a campaign promoting heart health.
In 2018, Carew rode on the Donate Life float in the Rose Parade in Reuland’s honor.
Two decades earlier, his daughter had died after doctors could not find a matching bone marrow donor.
Now Carew was alive because a 29-year-old man had chosen to become an organ donor.
“After losing Michelle, it’s the hardest thing for a parent to go through. And then watching what the Reulands went through losing their son, it just brought back memories of my time losing Michelle.”
In August 2024, Carew became a U.S. citizen at 78. He called it his “number one goal in this life.”
He has stayed close to the game, serving as a special assistant with the Twins since 2013.
In July, he sent this recorded message congratulating longtime broadcaster Dick Bremer on his induction into the Twins Hall of Fame.
Carew turns 81 in October.
On the diamond, he could make hitting look almost effortless.
Turns out, baseball was the easy part.
Away from the game, a different story.
Tragedy. Heartbreak.
But then, a second chance.
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P.S.
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John Boxley
High N Tight
