Baylor Comes Home Again : Baseball: Milwaukee Brewers’ hitting coach becomes third member of Angels’ Hall of Fame.

Don Baylor stood behind home plate at Anaheim Stadium Saturday and said it was still home, so many uniforms later.

“I can’t believe it’s happening and I’m in another uniform,” he said in the hours before the Angels made him the third member of their Hall of Fame. “I always thought I’d be like Brian Downing or Bobby (Grich). We came here together in 1977.”

Grich, who became the first member of the Angels’ Hall of Fame in 1988, was on the field to honor Baylor. Downing, nearing the end of his career, is still in an Angel uniform.

Baylor wore a suit, but after handshakes and hugs and an honorary first pitch--a lob in the dirt to former teammate Downing--Baylor put on No. 25 for the Milwaukee Brewers and spent the evening in the visitors’ dugout, a hitting coach at 40.

The home plate where Baylor had stood was his own plot of dirt in 1979, the year the Angels won their first division championship. It was also the year Baylor became the only Angel to be named MVP of the American League, the year he hit .296 with 36 homers and 139 runs batted in.

It was home in 1982, when the Angels won the AL West again, only to blow a 2-0 lead to the Milwaukee Brewers in the playoffs.

In 1986, it was at home plate in Anaheim Stadium that Baylor, then a member of the Boston Red Sox, hit a two-run homer off Mike Witt in the ninth inning of Game 5 of the League Championship Series. It became the prelude to the Angels’ most wrenching failure to reach the World Series, after Dave Henderson’s home run off Donnie Moore sent the game into extra innings and an eventual Boston victory.

“Those guys had a chance to go to the World Series, up three games to one,” Baylor said. “I wanted to go to one, too.”

Some people thought Baylor’s part in that game was a measure of revenge against Buzzie Bavasi, the former Angel general manager who had publicly criticized him, and who was content to let Baylor leave for the New York Yankees after the 1982 season, failing to re-sign him.

“I wanted to stay here,” he said. “It was bitter. . . .

“Not bitter ,” he said, looking for another word, but not finding one. “I had ties here. I felt I was part of the community. I felt I was part of the building process with the Angels. It was very, very difficult for me to leave and go to New York.”

In the years since, he has gotten revenge in triplicate, going to the World Series in the final three years of his playing career with the Boston Red Sox, the Minnesota Twins and the Oakland Athletics.

Baylor said he has not spoken to Bavasi since 1982, expressing whatever feelings he has by his very restraint.

While going through some personal belongings this winter, he found a letter Bavasi had written to him in 1982.

“It’s still sealed,” Baylor said.

It could be an apology, but Baylor said he does not wonder.

“It could be a check for $2 million,” he said, laughing. “I doubt it. . . . Maybe someone will open it in a hundred years.”

The mood Saturday was a sentimental, as Baylor joined Grich and Jim Fregosi in the Angels’ Hall of Fame.

Gene Autry, the man Baylor called “the best owner in baseball” was there to call him a friend. Dave Winfield, his Yankee teammate and now the player meant to become the kind of clubhouse leader Baylor had been, was there to do the same, as was Grich.

“When I come into this ballpark,” Baylor said. “I still call this home.”