Brett Butler is heading home. It is 9:33 p.m. last

Friday--eighth inning, one out, score 1-1--and before him lie

the next 90 feet of a journey so torturous he has called it

going "through hell and back." A play at the plate looms. There

are 41,509 people at Dodger Stadium rooting for him to beat this

damned thing...and for him to beat the throw from rightfield, too.

In the full flight of his sprint after tagging on a fly ball,

the tiny man appears, even at 39, as childlike as ever. His

feet, size 7 1/2, and his hands, balled inside a pair of

size-small batting gloves, pump like the wings of a hummingbird.

But look closer. He is pale. A hideous scar runs from the base

of his right ear, down his neck and across half of his throat,

forming a crooked letter L. There is also this: His mouth is dry

because his saliva glands no longer work. His right shoulder is

numb. His 161-pound body is fueled mostly by fruits, vegetables,

regular injections of an experimental cancer-fighting drug

called laetrile and 59 pills a day.

Just four months after his cancer of the tonsils was diagnosed,

just 38 days after undergoing the last of 32 radiation

treatments and just five emotionally charged hours after

explaining at a news conference that "this means more to me than

any game I've played in my life," Butler slides across the plate

as the throw from Pittsburgh Pirates rightfielder Mike Kingery

bounces on the infield grass. Butler has made it, safe and sound.

That run turns out to be the deciding one in a 2-1 Los Angeles

victory that puts the Dodgers in a first-place tie with the San

Diego Padres in the National League West. "Another miracle,"

Butler's wife, Eveline, said after this, his first game back as

the Dodgers' centerfielder. "Miracles happen around us, you know."

Miracles? Rarely in the sport has the word rung with such

resonance as it did last week. Four days before Butler's

return, New York Yankees righthander David Cone made a stunning

comeback from a career-threatening aneurysm--a ballooning of the

artery--just below his pitching shoulder that had sidelined him

four months earlier. With his father, Ed, watching from the

stands at Oakland Coliseum, Cone no-hit the A's for seven

innings before Yankees manager Joe Torre wisely decided not to

risk Cone's health for the glory of a no-hitter. He pulled Cone.

Reliever Mariano Rivera finished the game and allowed one hit,

an infield single in the ninth inning, as Cone and the Yankees

won 5-0.

Cone followed that with another strong outing, albeit a losing

one, at Yankee Stadium last Saturday. He allowed the Toronto

Blue Jays three runs on his first five pitches, then shut them

down before departing after seven innings, giving him this

sparkling post-op pitching line: 14 innings, five hits, three

runs, six walks and 14 strikeouts.

"I haven't had a chance to talk to him recently," Butler says of

Cone, whom he had befriended during the 1994-95 strike when they

both assumed leadership roles in support of the union. "He's

probably been as busy as I have. Plus, I think the doctors

wanted to isolate me from baseball as much as possible the last

four months." Butler, who chewed tobacco early in his career,

says doctors told him that stress may have contributed to his

cancer. "It came with the pressure from the strike, the Dodgers

not re-signing me [after 1994], my mother dying [in 1995, of

brain cancer], getting traded from the Mets back to the Dodgers

and the whole replacement-player thing." (He was vilified in Los

Angeles for shunning Mike Busch, a replacement player who was

recalled by the Dodgers last season.)

One year later Butler is so beloved in L.A. that the day after

his comeback his locker overflowed with gifts, flowers,

telegrams and faxes. A bottle of wine wrapped in cellophane went

untouched. "I can't drink alcohol," he said. "It burns my mouth."

It was on May 3 that Butler underwent what was expected to be a

routine tonsillectomy. Doctors, however, extracted a plum-sized

lump that turned out to be cancerous. His first thought was that

he was going to die. Nearly three weeks later doctors removed 50

lymph nodes. On June 17 Butler began six weeks of radiation

treatments that left him a withered 142 pounds. His throat was

so sore from the treatments that it took him 15 minutes to

swallow a strand of spaghetti when he visited Dodger Stadium on

July 30.

Over the next month Butler rebuilt his body with the help of

trainer Mackie Shilstone in New Orleans. He began working out

with the Dodgers on Aug. 27, and 10 days later he was in the

starting lineup.

The announcement of Butler's first at bat brought a 45-second

standing ovation. He bit his lip, tipped his helmet to the

crowd, took two deep breaths and grounded out on the first

pitch. In the third inning he popped out weakly. Then in the

fifth he slapped a ground ball single between shortstop and

third base. The crowd rejoiced. It was one of those magical

nights when the game seemed as small as a pebble on the ocean

floor. The same kind of feeling was evoked in 1993, when Bo

Jackson hit a home run in his first game with an artificial hip,

and in 1989, when Dave Dravecky won his first game back after

having a cancerous tumor removed from his pitching shoulder.

The winning run last Friday was vintage Butler: a seven-pitch

walk, a stolen base on which he continued to third on a throwing

error, and the dash home on a fly ball. An exhausted Butler was

replaced in the ninth inning. Still, he started the next night,

going 2 for 4 in a 4-3 win over the Pirates, and even on Sunday,

when he went 0 for 2 with two walks. Asked about needing a day

off, Butler shot back, "My goal is to play every day."

He did admit, however, that he must conserve his energy better.

He arrived in Los Angeles at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday on the team

flight from New York, taped The Tonight Show later that day,

scored the winning run on Friday, went to bed at 1:30 a.m. and

was up at 8 a.m. on Saturday to appear on Fox's pregame show. "I

can't keep that up," he said. Doctors have told him the survival

rate is 85% for patients who stay cancer-free for two years.

Let Sept. 6 stand as an unofficial holiday on the baseball

calendar. On that date in 1995 Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig's

record for consecutive games played (2,130). One year later,

even as Eddie Murray was hitting his 500th home run in

Baltimore, Butler was scoring the winning run in the most

important game of his life. After that game Butler repaired to

the trainer's room and underwent one of three weekly IV

infusions of laetrile, a drug not approved by the FDA.

It was 10:55 p.m. when Butler emerged from the 20-minute

treatment and a shower. All of his teammates were gone. A

clubhouse attendant handed him a message. It was from Murray,

his former teammate, who wanted Butler to call him.

Butler dressed, but he could not retrieve his valuables from the

safety box in his locker. He had been gone so long that he had

forgotten the combination on the lock. He walked out of the

clubhouse and into a room next door where Eveline was waiting.

Wordlessly, with tears pooling in her eyes, she hugged him

around his scarred, reddened neck, holding tightly, as if she

did not want to let go of the whole wonderful night.

COLOR PHOTO: V.J. LOVERO Butler scored the winning run in his first game following a four-month absence, then shared an emotional moment with Eveline. [Brett Butler sliding into home plate in game]

COLOR PHOTO: KIM KULISH/AFP [See caption above--Brett Butler hugging Eveline Butler]