After slip-up with Angels, Vaughn takes step forward

Mo Vaughn’s short but lucrative tenure with the Angels started off on the wrong foot, stumbled awkwardly from there and ended clumsily too.

Signed after the 1998 season to a six-year, $80-million free-agent contract, the richest in club history, the former American League most valuable player tumbled down the dugout steps pursuing a foul popup on the Angels’ opening night in 1999.

The resulting sprained ankle set the tone for a disjointed, injury-riddled three-year stay. Though Vaughn posted better-than-respectable power numbers during his two active seasons in Anaheim, his batting average fell well below its career peaks and the burly first baseman was never fully embraced by teammates or fans.

So by the time the Angels granted his wish and traded the former Boston Red Sox slugger to the New York Mets in December 2001 -- after he sat out the 2001 season because of an arm injury -- few seemed sorry to see him go.

It was speculated that the three-time All-Star, who grew up in Norwalk, Conn., and was educated at Seton Hall before joining the Red Sox, had simply grown homesick for his East Coast roots and was abandoning the Angels.

But Vaughn, who retired in 2003, says that wasn’t the case.

“I haven’t stated this to anybody,” the former Angel, 39, says from New York, where he’s forging a new career transforming dilapidated low-income housing developments into livable apartments, “but the reason I left Anaheim was because of Sept. 11. My parents never really missed a game and after Sept. 11 hit, I was like, ‘I’ve got to get back home. I don’t want my parents in the air.’ ”

He and former Angels closer Troy Percival may have traded blistering parting shots after Vaughn left -- Percival’s dismissing the notion that Vaughn was a respected clubhouse leader -- but Vaughn said he enjoyed his time with the Angels. Perhaps that’s because it was so much more successful than his time with the Mets.

Only a month into his second National League season, Vaughn was forced to retire because of chronic knee pain.

That pushed him into a new endeavor: housing development.

“I don’t think anything will replace baseball for me,” says the imposing Vaughn, who hit 328 home runs and batted .293 over 12 major league seasons but still laments not winning a World Series championship. “This is very, very rewarding, don’t get me wrong, but nothing’s going to be like coming up in the bottom of the ninth and winning the game with a walk-off bomb.

“Nothing’s going to be like that, but I’m working much harder now than I did then. I don’t have an off-season, like I did as a player, and the responsibility is great because the expectations are high. In so many ways, this is tougher.”

Vaughn and partner Eugene Schneur, with government financing assistance, have acquired 11 properties, one in Wyoming and the rest in New York.

To date, Vaughn says, they’ve renovated about 2,000 units.

Focusing on the business opportunity, the former ballplayer says the social facet of what he and Schneur were doing was lost on him at first.

“But when we went inside that first building,” says Vaughn, who grew up in a middle-class suburban environment, “that’s when I found out that people have been living in these places for 20 or 30 years. I was like, ‘Wow.’ These people live in these places for generations. When I found that out, that’s when it clicked in my head that this is something that really needs to be done. If you’ve ever been to some of these low-income places, you know they’re horrible. . . .

“We’re a for-profit company, no doubt about it; we’re putting money in our pocket. But this is a win-win all the way around. How many things are there that you can do in life where everybody benefits? Not many. This is one of them.”

Once upon a time, perhaps, Vaughn was not so altruistic.

He signed with the Angels, of course, to boost his income.

“I thought Boston wasn’t paying me what I deserved as an athlete, so I go out to L.A., I fall into the dugout and my career takes a downward spiral from that day forward. But, hell, things happen,” Vaughn says.

“In some ways, I might not be here doing what I’m doing now if things had turned out differently. I’ve been very, very fortunate. How many people get the opportunity to play baseball and own their own development company?”

It took time, though, for Vaughn to make the transition.

“From the time I had to retire until the time I got my first deal,” he says, “I think I was at odds with myself, in my mind. You worry about, how are people going to perceive you. You’re known as an athlete. Are people going to give you the same respect when you’re doing something else?”

And are they?

“I think I get more,” he says. “I haven’t stopped being Mo Vaughn -- people have given me the same respect. It’s been a great ride for me.”

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jerome.crowe@latimes.com