If you’re a baseball fan in Southern California, you know about Rod Carew, ex-California Angel ; ex-Minnesota Twin, because he’s one of the best hitters to ever so much as glance at a bat . If you’ve endured pediatric leukemia and needed a special bone marrow transplant, you might know of Carew – or actually know the guy – because he’s spent much of the past few decades raising awareness and scrounging up money and finding transplant donations for people facing your often lethal battle. His daughter Michelle died of the disease at 18 years old.
If you were an aspiring big leaguer growing up in Panama; a Marine Reserve in Minnesota; a kid connected to a charity in Minneapolis in the mid-1970s; you might know Carew because he was held up as an example to you, or served next to you, or gave money to you. And on Friday, Aug. 23, in an otherwise unremarkable assembly room at the bottom of the Federal Building in Santa Ana, you could’ve come to know Carew in an entirely different way – as a new member of what officials refer to as “the American family.
” “It took a lifetime, a great lifetime, but I’m in,” Carew said, smiling slyly as some bigwigs from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service scurried behind him in advance of making him repeat the “Oath of Allegiance.
” Former Angels star and Hall of Famer Rod Carew, who was born in Panama, after taking the Oath of Allegiance to become a U.S. Citizen in Santa Ana, CA, on Friday, Aug.
23, 2024. (Photo .