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Carew's climb to prominence—to being a folk hero in two nations—was long and slow, tempered by illness and early poverty. On Oct. 1, 1945, Olga Carew knew her baby was due and started the journey by train from Gatun, on the Atlantic side of the Canal Zone, to Gamboa, where doctors in the clinic could attend the child's birth. But the baby would not wait, so Margaret Allen, a nurse, and Dr. Rodney Cline, a physician, both of whom happened to be aboard the train, delivered the woman's second son. The nurse became the child's godmother, the doctor forevermore the stuff of baseball trivia. Rod was a sickly child who contracted rheumatic fever when he was twelve. His resulting weakness drew his father's alternating scorn and uninterest. His uncle, Joseph French, a recreation official and Little League coach in Panama, became a kind of foster father, taking the boy to ball games and encouraging him as he grew stronger to use his emerging athletic talents.
Rod grew up playing with rag balls wound in tape; his prize possession was a Ted Williams bat won for his superior play in local Little Leagues. He even slept with the bat and was brokenhearted when it was stolen after a pickup game. His mother recalls: "He was still, quiet and alone as a child. He was always walking around with a bat and ball in his hand." His two childhood dreams: Go to the U.S. Become a big league baseball player.
When Carew was 15, his mother immigrated to New York City and, after finding a home and a job, sent for Rod and his older brother Eric. Flying into New York at night, Rod stared down on the city. "It was so big from the air," he recalls, "I couldn't believe it." He entered Manhattan's George Washington High School (Henry Kissinger's alma mater), but did not go out for school sports; his afternoons were taken up by a part-time job in a grocery store to help support the family.
Eventually, however, he and a friend began playing in weekend sandlot games in Macombs Dam Park, adjacent to Yankee Stadium. The hitting touch developed in Panama had not deserted him. After a few weeks he caught the eye of a teammate's father who was a "bird dog"—an unofficial unpaid scout —for the Minnesota Twins. A phone call brought a scout; the scout made another call, which, in turn, fetched the Twins' farm director. Finally, when Minnesota came to town for a series with the Yankees, young Carew was brought inside the stadium for a try out.
He was a skinny, 170-lb. 6-ft. kid of 18 with the sort of lean, whippet's body that did not conjure up images of a slugger. Then he stepped into the batting cage. In a few short minutes, the onlookers needed no images—the reality was too splendid. Recalls Carew: "I was hitting some shots. I mean really hitting the ball." He blasted so many balls into the bleachers, in fact, that Twins Manager Sam Mele—fearing spying Yankee eyes—ordered him out of the batting cage: "Get him out of here before somebody sees the kid!" One month later, Rod signed with the Twins for a $5,000 bonus.