Fred Claire had a route in every city. At home or on the road, he had to get his six miles in every day. As the Dodgers’ general manager from 1987 to 1998, Claire was the rare AARP-eligible jogger crossing the Roebling Bridge into Kentucky from Cincinnati, or tracing the bank of the Allegheny River outside Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Stadium, running wherever the baseball schedule took him.

Now 81, Claire remembers being diligent about wearing sunscreen.

“But not the gloss on my lip,” he said.

Sun and time can be the baseball lifer’s worst enemy, deadly if left alone to conspire with the fate of a man’s skin. By January 2015, what looked like a harmless spot on Claire’s lip turned out to be squamous cell carcinoma, a cancerous manifestation of hundreds of days spent in the sun. He underwent a minor operation to have the cells removed.

Claire went back to work on his baseball app, Scoutables; back to golfing; back to running three days a week, three miles at a time. Such was his routine until the cancer returned in August, this time worse than before.

“This incredible pain would come up, usually not in the morning but in the afternoon,” Claire said. “It would just bring me to my knees.”

Scans showed a nerve in the left side of his face “had literally been torn by cancer,” Claire said. Earlier this month, he had the nerve removed along with several lymph nodes in the same area. Beginning Nov. 7, Claire will undergo radiation and chemotherapy treatments to kill the malignant cells still pillaging his body.

Hindsight reveals a cruel irony: At the same time the sun was destroying his face, Claire was building the strength he needed to fight the battle of his life.

“Get yourself in as good of shape as you can because you never know what’s going to hit you,” Claire said on a recent afternoon from his home in Pasadena. “When you have trouble getting out of bed after an operation, you have to have the strength in your body to cope with that. Strength in your legs becomes very important. Strength in your arms becomes very important. I’m going to get in better shape than I’ve ever been in my life.

“I want to move. I want to go on. I want to contribute.”

For five days a week, at 10 o’clock in the morning each day, Claire will report to City of Hope in Duarte for radiation. Chemotherapy will run concurrently. The six-week treatment regimen is scheduled to end just before Christmas, but Claire isn’t looking that far ahead right now. Ask him for a prognosis and Claire says he’s taking it one day at a time, like an outfielder sidelined by a pulled hamstring.

At the moment he is enjoying the Cleveland Indians’ quest to win their first World Series since 1948.

When he was 13 years old and living in Jamestown, Ohio, Claire saw a print advertisement for a film reel of the just-completed 1948 series. He and his brother saved up their money and sent for the reel. With no TV in their home, the film became the brothers’ lifeline to a remote world. They watched the series over and over, to the point where Claire said he could recite every play in every inning.

To this day he still recalls details of blown calls and clutch performances from the Indians’ last triumph.

“That established my foundation,” Claire said.

Last week, Claire called into his office to catch up on voicemails. A get-well message from Vin Scully was waiting for him. Scully, who recently retired after 67 years as a broadcaster for the Dodgers, is one of many who have reached out since Claire publicly disclosed his battle last week.

Getting an early start in baseball made those relationships possible, and Claire doesn’t take them for granted.

By sharing his story, Claire hopes to pay it forward in a sense. He hopes that others, especially those in baseball who work in direct sunlight, will take steps to avoid the battle before him. His advice goes beyond merely taking care of your body.

“John Wooden said it: make each day your masterpiece,” he said. “Treasure each day that you have. And I mean that. I’ve loved every minute that I was with the Dodgers, but it didn’t start and end there. I consider myself to be extremely fortunate. Going back to a kid in Jamestown, I’ve lived the life of my dreams. Literally.”