COTTSDALE, Ariz. -- On the surface, Joe Garagiola Sr. leads the life of many other retired athletes in the Valley of the Sun. The former Cubs catcher and former host of the "Today" show plays golf. He speaks at banquets. He likes the early dinner at the Quilted Bear on North Scottsdale Road. Garagiola turned 80 on Feb. 12. Unlike other retired athletes, Garagiola got up the next morning and drove 35 miles south to the St. Peter Indian Mission School on the Gila River Reservation in Bapchule, Ariz. He has done this a few times a week for the last 13 years. On this unique morning, the children of the Pima and Maricopa tribes were throwing a birthday party for the man they call "Awesome Fox."

Garagiola has led the way for the impoverished reservation to obtain new bathrooms, a basketball court and a baseball field. He is raising money to build a new library. The school already has a copy of Garagiola's 1960 best seller, Baseball Is a Funny Game.

A spiritual leader gave Garagiola the name "Awesome Fox" because his work had been awesome and he's sorta foxy in working the angles - - after all, he played in Chicago.

"I still belong to the Cubs, by the way," Garagiola said during a conversation on his birthday at the

Hotel Valley Ho. "I'm still on their voluntary retirement list. I kid [Cubs president] Andy [MacPhail], 'That's part of your problem."'

The old catcher is knee deep in one of the most awesome chapters of his life.

"I can't tell you what keeps me going down there," Garagiola said. "When I first went to the mission, I saw 225 kids -- they had nothing. Their basketball uniforms were T-shirts and shorts. When the boys took them off, the girls had to wear the same sweaty uniforms. It was horrible. The buildings were infested with termites. Their baseball field was overrun with weeds. The bathrooms were from 1933. There's 97 boys, and there were two urinals -- and one was broken. The nuns are so good to these kids, but they all needed help."

A majority of the children, ages 5-14, live in homes without air- conditioning, heat or beds.