BUTLER FOCUSES ON LIFE : AS CANCER SURGERY LOOMS, FAMILY HANGS ON TO ROUTINE, FAITH.

Byline: Tim Brown Daily News Staff Writer

He sat on a bar stool in the middle of his marble-floor kitchen with a towel wrapped around his shoulders. Piles of hair gathered near his feet while he dozed. Brett Butler took time out from cancer Tuesday to get his hair cut.

In a downstairs room, where autographed baseball bats dangled in back-lit cases and major-league uniforms hung in 4-foot frames, Pittsburgh Pirates players Jay Bell and Mike Kingery played snooker with Butler's 8-year-old son, Blake. Eveline, Butler's wife, cleaned the dishes from lunch for seven and went off to ferry their three daughters home from school.

The phone, all three lines, rang ceaselessly. Some went unanswered, and the voices on the other end crackled through the answering machine. Cecil and Beanie, miniature dachshunds, snoozed beneath a blanket on the couch, their heads on pillows Blake fluffed for them.

Outside the 12,000-square-foot French Mediterranean home the Butlers moved into on the day before Thanksgiving, workers shouted and pushed wheelbarrows filled with brick.

Two weeks ago, Brett Butler started in center field for the Dodgers and had a hit. On Monday afternoon, he will check into Emory University Hospital in order to have 50 lymph nodes removed from his neck, along with a portion of muscle tissue which doctors assume is cancerous.

In between, there is fear. But there also is normalcy. And there is trust, Butler says, in God's plan.

In the guest house he built for his mother, who died of brain cancer in August, less than three months before she was to come live with him, Butler sits amid the flowered upholstery and bright yellow walls.

Maintaining a semblance of normal routine is important for his family, Butler says, even as he considers his life and the possibility of his death.

``I don't think that you can stop any of that,'' he whispered from a throat still raw from the tonsillectomy that led to the discovery of a cancerous tumor.

``You gotta stay with it, because if you get into that, and you're consumed by it, it's going to eat you up,'' he said. ``It's going to eat you up. There's nothing I can do about anything until Tuesday, when they take this thing out. That's the thing, I've got this thing in me that could be growing. I asked Eveline the other day, `I think this is bigger. Feel this. Is this bigger?' ''

In 1981 while in Richmond, Va., Eveline began to pray that she would meet a good Christian man. Three months later, she met a determined minor league outfielder named Butler, and three days later they made wedding plans.

``I can't think about the cancer,'' Eveline said. ``I don't want to think about not having Brett around the rest of my life. I said to Brett, `If I think about that now, it won't help. It won't change anything.'

``Our life has been a fairy tale. It has truly been a fairy tale. I've never wanted to leave him. I've never wanted a divorce. Never looked at another man. He's `Prince Charming.' He is what you see.''

Brett, the optimist, and Eveline, a natural pessimist, have had a running joke for 15 years. He calls her a pessimist, and she says, ``No, I'm a realist.'' Then they laugh.

Ten days ago Dr. Bob Gadlage walked into their home and told them Brett had cancer. In the conversation, Eveline heard the 70 percent survival rate and steeled herself for the children.

``I probably was in shock,'' Brett said. ``I heard cancer. Cancer. Death.''

In a quiet moment, Eveline said, ``He was like doom and gloom. I said, `Brett, I really think you're going to get through it.' ''

He told her she didn't know that, and she said, ``You're being a pessimist.''

``A realist,'' he corrected.

He had his first relief from pain Sunday, nine days after the surgery.

``I think it gave him an opportunity to think about something else,'' Eveline said.

That afternoon, he snapped at Katie, their youngest daughter, and Eveline just began to cry. For an instant, the normalcy was gone, and Eveline sobbed, ``You can't blame us. We didn't give you cancer.''

That night Brett knelt at his bedside and, for the first time as an adult, did not know what to ask for. He did not know how to pray for this. He tried.

``I know your world is greater than mine, and I'm here to serve you first,'' he said. ``I know you'll take care of Eveline and the kids. You've taken care of us this far. Why wouldn't you do it now? And I trust you on that.''

He reflected on his prayer and said, ``But, still, it's the uncertainty of the unknown. On Tuesday I'm having surgery. I don't know what it is. Is it growing?

``I can't get through this in the flesh. I can't. I'm going to fall short. I'm going to stumble and fall. I'm going to cry. I'm going to get scared. Nervous. I'll feel vulnerable. All those emotions that everybody goes through. I've got to have the faith of the child.''

After dinner Tuesday night, Brett and Eveline sorted through thousands of cards and letters and telegrams. The New York Mets and the San Diego Padres played ball on television in the background. A young boy's mother wrote that the first person her son mentioned in his prayers was Butler. She thought Brett should know. The letters came from strangers and old friends and teammates. They came from relatives they didn't know they had.

The children slept upstairs. Dirty ice cream dishes sat on the coffee table. Normalcy.

He is somewhat thinner, 6 or 7 pounds' worth. He looks and speaks like a man recovering from a tonsillectomy.

``I don't believe I'm going to die,'' he said. ``Do I believe I'll play baseball again? I don't know that. I don't believe I'm going to die, and if I do, it's his will. But I believe God has other things for me.''

Eveline recalled an incident a few years ago when they were in their car during spring training, when a radio report told them of the death of Tim Crews, the former Dodgers pitcher.

``My heart just died,'' Eveline said, feeling the terrible pain for Crews' family, the three children. She turned to Brett and said, ``What would I ever do if you died?''

Now she herself has stood in a hospital room, in the arms of family friend and confidant Tim Cash, when doctors told her of their suspicions that her husband has cancer.

She has put her heart in God's hands.

``I feel,'' she said, ``like God is putting his hand down and saying, `Do you trust me?' ''

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PHOTO (color) Brett Butler

Surgery scheduled Tuesday