The biggest complication in Greg Ostertag's donation of a kidney to his sister cropped up before Thursday's operation even started. "We had to search around a little bit," his surgeon said, "to find a table long enough to put him on."

That accomplished, everything else went perfectly.

Ostertag's left kidney, removed during a 2 1/2-hour procedure in the same surgical suite where Mickey Mantle received a similar transplant in 1995, "pinked up immediately" when it was sewn into Amy Hall, according to Robert Goldstein, the surgeon who did the sewing. "The new kidney is working wonderfully."