THE WORLD SERIES : HOME IN A DOME : Brunansky Has Put Down Roots, Put Up Big Numbers in Minnesota

He was a Southern California teen-ager who loved the beach but now he owns a house and boat on Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, not to mention a four-wheel-drive truck to cope with the snow.

He was once one of the Angels’ top prospects but now has a six-year, $6.1-million contract with the Minnesota Twins.

He was the subject of Twins’ trade speculation last winter but went on to have his best season, a prelude to what has been a comparable postseason.

This finishing flourish represents the best transition of all for Tom Brunansky, a measure of how far the Twins, now just two wins away from a World Series championship, have come since 1982, when they lost 102 games.

“It was like having a Triple-A club in the majors,” Brunansky said of the year that Gary Gaetti, Kent Hrbek and he spent their first full summer with the Twins.

“Clubs came in and laughed at us,” he said. “If they didn’t sweep us, they considered it a bad series. We took our lumps and it hurt, but it was a learning experience. Five years later, we’ve come full circle.”

Now, those five years later and longer yet from West Covina High, where he attracted football and baseball attention, it can be said that Brunansky helped chart the Twins’ course.

He is among the team’s leaders in practical jokes and one of only seven major leaguers to have hit 20 or more home runs for six straight seasons. He tied his career high with 32 this year and drove in 85 runs while generally batting sixth or seventh in the order, meaning that Gaetti, Hrbek and Kirby Puckett had done a lot of base cleaning ahead of him.

In the five games of the American League playoffs with the Detroit Tigers, Brunansky batted .412 and drove in nine runs. There were those who thought he should have been voted the most valuable player, instead of Gaetti. But Brunansky didn’t argue then and he’s not arguing now, though it cost him a $25,000 bonus.

“Gary’s statement at the time was that you can divide it (the award) 24 ways, and that’s how I feel,” said Brunansky, who still has a good shot at World Series MVP.

He is hitting .348 through seven postseason games with an on-base average of .483. His eight hits include four doubles and two home runs.

One of the problems for a power hitter operating low in the batting order is that pitchers tend to work around him, a strategy that Tim Laudner and Steve Lombardozzi, hitting eighth and ninth, have tended to spoil, combining for nine RBIs in the seven playoff and World Series games.

Brunansky, who batted fourth behind Hrbek before this year, has accepted his walks--74 during the regular season and 6 in the postseason, where he has scored 7 runs.

“When Kirby developed his power stroke (hitting 31 homers in 1986 and 28 last year), it was obvious he was going to drop from leadoff to No. 3 in the batting order, which was going to move everyone else down,” Brunansky said.

“I look around at other clubs and know I’d have a chance to drive in more runs than I do hitting near the bottom here. But the way our lineup is broken up with right- and left-handed hitters, and the way we’ve been hitting from top to bottom, I still get the chance to drive in runs.

“We have a solid, balanced lineup. If they’re going to walk us and try to take the bats out of our hands, fine. Everybody feels comfortable enough with the man behind him. My attitude is, ‘OK, drop the bat, take the walk, make them pay.’

“I’m at a point in my career where it doesn’t matter where I hit. The name of the game is to win, and the only way to win is as a team. If people were worried about where they hit, we wouldn’t be where we are.”

Brunansky didn’t expect to be where he is until he realized that the Angels of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s put a premium on veteran free agents and that young players didn’t fit in.

A widely recruited wide receiver, he considered a scholarship offer from Stanford, rejected it and signed with the Angels as their No. 1 draft choice in 1978.

“The big talk when I was (with the Angels) was that they had to win now,” Brunansky said. “There was pressure to get it done immediately. They were into signing as many big-name free agents as they could. There was a generation gap between the veterans and young players. Mike Witt was the only young player in that period that they gave a chance to develop.

“I didn’t think I had a future there, and when they sent me down at the start of the ’82 season I went to Buzzie Bavasi (then the general manager) and told him that if I wasn’t one of the best 25 players in the organization, he should trade me and get the pitcher they need. Buzzie said it was a temporary move, that I’d be back soon and that I’d be with the organization for 25 years. It was the kiss of death.

“I went to Spokane, pouted, acted like a kid, realized I had to pull myself out of it and was just starting to swing the bat when they traded me.”

In a move spawned by the desperate need for relief pitching on a high-salaried and aging team that couldn’t be sure of how many more chances it would have to win, Bavasi and Manager Gene Mauch sent Brunansky to Minnesota for relief pitcher Doug Corbett and utility infielder Rob Wilfong.

Corbett collapsed, saving 22 games in five years. The trade, from an Angel standpoint, ranks as one of the worst since the Indians dealt away Manhattan. Brunansky’s 162 homers in six seasons with the Twins are 27 more than any Angel has hit in that span.

He reflected and said: “I was happy to be going straight to a major league club but tentative about going someplace where I didn’t know anybody. I only knew they had a bunch of rookies and some weird names in the box scores--an Italian named Gaetti and a guy named Hrbek hitting the cover off the ball.

“I was apprehensive, but the chance to play on a regular basis in the major leagues outweighed everything else. I mean, I think I’d have eventually gotten a chance with the Angels, but it would have been two or three years down the road. I’d have loved to play at home, but how can I be bitter? The Angels sent me to where I could play.”

The opportunity was there, but the situation wasn’t easy. The young and inexperienced Twins established a club record for losses. Owner Calvin Griffith either refused or was financially unable to sign free agents, trade for high salaried veterans or meet the contract requests of his own players.

Brunansky, however, said that when he looks back on that period, he remembers good times rather than bad. Part of it, he said, stemmed from the relaxed demeanor of then-Manager Billy Gardner.

“It was tough to accept the outcome each day but it wasn’t tough to come back for the next game,” he said. “Billy kept it loose, and a lot of Billy is still there in our clubhouse today.

“If we’d have had to play for a high-strung manager during that period, we’d all be in an asylum by now.

“I think about those years and I think about the fun we had and the closeness that developed. I came here and was immediately invited to stay with Gaetti and Hrbek at their apartment. I lived with Kent for three years before getting married.

“There was maturing to do and holes to fill, but the lessons and relationships of those years have contributed to our current success. No one achieves it without trial and tribulation, and we had our share.”

It might have continued, too, had Griffith not sold the team to Minnesota banker Carl Pohlad, who overhauled the front office and provided the economic resources that were missing. Brunansky benefited immediately. He had lost in salary arbitration after the 1984 season, and newspaper stories carried his unhappy response regarding the absence of negotiations before the arbitration hearing. New owner Pohlad called to say he didn’t like to see the club portrayed negatively and would be sitting down with Brunansky soon.

“Within 24 hours we had worked out the six-year contract that we hadn’t been able to work out all winter,” Brunansky said. “It was the next year that the owners went to their policy of collusion and not giving out more than three-year contracts. I feel fortunate to be where I am, earning what I am.”

Fortunate, too, in another way.

The key to the Twins’ 1987 success was the acquisition of relief pitcher Jeff Reardon.

Bullpen help had been essential. The frequency of the late-inning losses in 1986 had created what Brunansky called an “ugly situation,” producing finger-pointing and something of a division between the relief pitchers and the rest of the team.

“Every time I picked up a paper last winter, it seemed like I was being traded somewhere for a pitcher,” Brunansky said, adding that he heard he was going to Chicago for Richard Dotson or Floyd Bannister, to Seattle for Mike Moore, to Kansas City for Mark Gubicza or to Detroit for Willie Hernandez, who reportedly used his veto right to kill the deal.

Said General Manager Andy MacPhail: “We certainly weren’t looking to move Brunansky, but we had to consider anything to improve the bullpen, and his name, like everyone else’s, kept coming up. We were fortunate, eventually, to be able to acquire Reardon without giving up one of our regular position players.”

Said Brunansky: “I feel fortunate to be sitting here today. I feel like I dodged some bullets. I told my wife when I left for spring training that, with Reardon, we had a chance to win the West. I also felt secure in my own status again. It had been a hard winter and I was happy to still be a member of the Twins.”

Brunansky’s wife, Colleen, is another benefit of the trade to Minnesota. She is the sister of Dave Engle, a former Twin teammate.

“Rod Carew told me when I was traded here that Minnesota is one of the best-kept secrets in baseball, and he was right,” Brunansky said. “I love it--the area, the people, the life style. I hated to move away from my family, but I would have never found this same environment in Southern California.”

At 27, Brunansky said he would like to play until he is 40 and believes his best years are ahead of him. If he could hit 32 homers and drive in 90 runs once--he achieved the latter figure in 1985--he figures he can hit 40 homers and drive in 100.

He and his teammates, however, learned a lesson about statistics this year. Manager Tom Kelly preached it, and it has been driven home by the responses of the Metrodome crowds and the clubhouse glow that is the product of October success.

“We’ve learned a lot this year about sticking together, playing together, staying on an even keel,” Brunansky said. “We’ve also learned how much fun the game is when you put the team first.”