Baylor’s Best Days Were in Anaheim : Hall of Fame: Former Angel says three-game series against Yankees in 1979 was the most thrilling of his career.

In the late afternoon light Monday at Anaheim Stadium, Don Baylor will stand in the visitors dugout and look out at the field where he played the greatest series of his life.

It wasn’t any of the three American League Championship Series that have been played in Anaheim Stadium, even though Baylor was a part of all of them. It wasn’t any of the three World Series he found himself in as he moved from Boston to Minnesota to Oakland in the final three years of his playing career.

The greatest series of his 17-year career was none other than three mid-season games at the Big A in 1979, a weekend sweep of the still-mighty New York Yankees.

“That series molded the organization,” Baylor says. “The big boys from the East came in here and got swept.”

It was a series of Ryan and Grich and Rudi, of Guidry and Gossage and Jackson and Nettles and Munson. It was a series of Baylor, in the midst of the only MVP year the Angels have known. It was a series that proved to the Angels that they could do something they had never done in their first 18 seasons--win a divisional championship.

For all that came afterward--all the success and all the disappointment, including the bitter departure from the Angels and Buzzie Bavasi in 1982--Baylor still says those three games made up for the most thrilling series of his career.

“Without a doubt,” he said.

He walks into Anaheim Stadium now as a coach, not a player. As a Brewer, not an Angel. After wearing the uniform of six different teams, he regards the Baltimore Orioles of his youth as the closest thing he has seen to baseball bliss. But he thinks of Anaheim Stadium as the closest thing to home.

And after the Brewers conclude a three-game series Wednesday at Anaheim Stadium, he will remain for a day as home pays tribute to him, when he is inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday at the Disneyland Hotel.

BAYLOR’S MVP YEAR

It has been 11 years since the Yankee series of July 13-15, 1979. Baylor remembers it as if it had been 11 days ago. “They were doing construction on the ballpark, preparing for the Rams,” he said while sitting in the visitors clubhouse during the Brewers’ first trip through in May. “The stadium was still open, and the traffic out there--you could see the traffic lined up on the 57 Freeway. The game had to be delayed, so many people wanted to come. It was a Friday night. From what we heard, 10,000 or more were outside and couldn’t get in. Nolan was pitching that night. I don’t think they got a hit until the ninth inning. He struck out about 12 guys (Ryan struck out nine).”

The Angels won, 6-1.

“The next night, we’re down 6-2. Tommy John started, and we’re losing that game. They bring Gossage in to pitch. I hit a homer. Joe Rudi hits a solo homer. That makes it 6-4.

“The second time around, with two outs in the ninth. I’m up facing Gossage again. The first pitch I hit a line drive off the foul pole and tie the game in the ninth. You talk about pandemonium. The whole place is shaking.”

The Angels won in the 12th inning, 8-7, when Brian Downing scored the winning run.

On Sunday, the Angels fell behind Ron Guidry, 4-0, but they won in the ninth, on Bobby Grich’s two-out, two-run homer.

“Bobby Grich drives in all five runs to top it off,” Baylor said.

Downing, the only remaining Angel from that team, remembers the Yankee series with the same sense of reverence as Baylor does.

“Without question, that one series, out of the hundreds and hundreds I’ve played in, that’s at the top of the list, no question,” Downing said as he prepared to take batting practice at Anaheim Stadium this weekend. “Donny hit the tying and game-winning home runs off Gossage, and Goose was in his prime. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. The second one hit the foul pole--that’s always neat. Goose Gossage was at his ultimate, and few have ever been better.”

Part of the allure of that series was the newness of the success. The Angels went into the All-Star break leading Texas by two games in the American League West.

They would win their first divisional title, then lose the pennant to the Orioles in four games. But it was a year in which the Angels came of age, full of confidence if not braggadocio.

Baylor was as confident as anyone.

He played 162 games, missing only one inning the entire season. He led the league with 120 runs and 139 RBIs. He hit 36 homers, a career high, and 33 doubles.

In his autobiography, “Nothing But the Truth: A Baseball Life,” Baylor recalls that a popular song that summer was “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” by McFadden and Whitehead.

“We’re in the groove,” goes one of the lines. Groove, a sweet hitter’s groove, was the nickname that had stuck to Baylor.

That summer a fan hung a sign in left field, one word, in big bold letters, “GROOVE.”

That’s what it was, a season-long groove that gave the Angels their first division championship. It was only the first of seven for Baylor, but it was the only time he----or the Angels--had an MVP year.

A SECOND TITLE, AND BAYLOR’S DEPARTURE

In 1982, the Angels won 93 games and a second AL West championship. Rod Carew hit .319 and Reggie Jackson hit 39 home runs.

In the American League Championship Series against the Brewers, the Angels went up two games to none, but lost the next three in the best-of-five series.

Baylor batted .294 with 10 RBIs, tying two ALCS records with five RBIs in Game 1 and a grand slam in Game 4.

They were the last games he would play as an Angel.

“We were so close in ‘82,” Baylor said. “I became a free agent. I wanted to stay here.”

His relationship with General Manager Buzzie Bavasi, however, had deteriorated.

The previous year, Baylor had retired for a day in anger over a comment Bavasi made to John Hall of The Orange County Register. Bavasi, looking at a picture of Baylor standing next to Fred Lynn and Rod Carew, was quoted as saying, “What’s Don doing in that picture with the two hitters?”

Bavasi said the remark was meant tongue-in-cheek. Baylor didn’t accept that.

After the 1982 season, the Angels did not re-sign Baylor, and he signed with the Yankees in December.

“It was bitter,” Baylor said. “Not bitter, but I had so many ties here. I felt I was part of the building process of the Angels. It was very, very difficult for me to leave and go to New York.

“You can look around and say I had a chance to go play with a World Series team and be a Yankee . . . but Mr. (Gene) Autry was by far the finest owner I played for. I wanted to be here.

“I wasn’t bitter, but I had paid my dues. I put a lot into the community. Like I said, after the MVP year of ‘79, my contract ended in ’82 and I just wanted a three-year extension, not to go in and renegotiate. I didn’t believe in that.

“I sacrificed for this organization, gave everything this organization asked. I was entrenched in the community. I finally had a place to call home. . . . Six years, I said this is a perfect match. The night before the Angels announced John McNamara would be managing the team--he was the third base coach in ‘78--he wanted me around, of course. He said that publicly, on the news, on TV.”

None of that mattered. Baylor became a Yankee.

His relationship with Bavasi never revived. Last winter, Baylor says, he came across a letter from Bavasi, postmarked 1982.

“It’s still sealed,” Baylor said.

It could be an apology. Baylor doesn’t know.

“It could be a check for $2 million,” he said. “But I doubt it.”

The letter may never be opened. “Maybe in 100 years,” he said.

And he broke up laughing.

“No, I don’t hold a grudge.”

THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER DUGOUT

In 1986, Baylor played in another ALCS in Anaheim Stadium, this time with the Boston Red Sox. The Angels took a three-games-to-one lead in the best-of-seven series. The next game is the one Baylor remembers as the single greatest in which he played.

Game 5 has come to be remembered for Dave Henderson’s two-out, two-strike, two-run homer in the ninth inning against Donnie Moore that kept the Angels out of the World Series. The Angels tied the score, 6-6, in the ninth, but the Red Sox won, 7-6, in the 11th inning.

But before Henderson homered, Baylor had helped bring the game within reach with his own homer off Mike Witt, a one-out shot off a full-count pitch with one out in the ninth. Baylor’s homer cut the Angels’ lead to 5-4.

Baylor says he thought about Bavasi as he kneeled in the on-deck circle.

It was not the first time Baylor had seen Anaheim Stadium on the verge of celebration, but it was the first time from the other side of the field.

“I sat out in the dugout and looked across the field,” Baylor said. “I can remember how the California Highway Patrol were lined up on the right-field line and down the left-field line. To see the mood change . . . There were people hanging on the backstop, there I was, seeing that. . . . Even in 1979 when (Frank) Tanana recorded the final out (of the division-clinching game) it wasn’t like that.”

For the third time, the other team would go to the World Series.

“The people I thought about were Mr. Autry, Gene Mauch, Bobby Grich, Jimmie Reese, Rod Carew,” Baylor said. “Those guys had a chance to go to the World Series. They were up three games. But I wanted to go too. Only one of us was going.”

It wasn’t the Angels.

Downing, asked if he could be happy for Baylor when the Red Sox won the series in the seventh game, didn’t hesitate.

“No. . . . him, no,” Downing said. “If he hadn’t hit that damn home run in the ninth inning, we’d have been in the World Series.”

THE BAYLOR FACTOR

The Red Sox in 1986 were the first of three teams that would go to the World Series with Baylor on their roster.

It became almost a joke. Where Baylor went, so went the pennant.

The role of his leadership and presence became a topic. What was it? How much could it mean to a team?

“I don’t know if I commanded it or whatever,” Baylor said. “It kind of followed me around.”

Dave Winfield, who played with Baylor in New York and is now cast in a clubhouse leadership role with the Angels, called Baylor’s presence a delicate gift--one that once sought, is harder to attain.

“To gain the confidence, admiration and respect of your teammates, that is not something you can ask for or be anointed with by your favorite manager,” Winfield said. “I guess people use the word presence. It has to do with attitude, him being what you call a hard ballplayer, a ballplayer’s ballplayer. (Baylor) could do a lot of things, and he was always in the game. Even from the dugout, he would rag on the pitcher, take everyone on.”

Baylor was a master of techniques to release tension in the clubhouse. Once, when reporters gathered around a struggling pitcher, Baylor threw a shouting fit. He became the story.

“What Donny is into is usually more vocal,” said Downing, who himself eschews any leadership role. “During the game, ragging on pitchers. After a tough game, in the clubhouse. If the team was going bad, Reggie and Donny would take the focus away from the rest of the team and just put it on themselves.”

Such as the case with the pitcher.

“They’d make a big scene out of it, and then the struggler would be left alone,” Downing said. “I saw that happen several times.

“It sounds like a cliche--’We’ll get ‘em tomorrow,’--but it goes beyond that,” Downing said. “He even gave the other team the idea that we’re not going to give up. He’d be verbal, and he’d be physical.”

That Baylor has a future in management seems clear. The question is more whether it will be on the field or in the front office.

Baylor, originally hired by the Brewers as a special assistant to general manager Harry Dalton, said he would prefer the front office.

“I’m interested in putting the puzzle together instead of managing the puzzle,” Baylor said. “I’ve seen it’s not going to be easy. But it’s something I want. As a player, I got what I wanted.”

Winfield and Downing both envision him as an on-field manager. Already he has a five-game managerial career, as interim manager for the Brewers recently during Tom Trebelhorn’s five-game suspension for his part in a brawl against Seattle.

“He could probably do both--I know he could do both,” Winfield said. “If he became a manager, he would never forget he used to be a player, like some of them do. No he wouldn’t do that. I doubt that very much.”

Downing agreed.

“Your leaders are like him--they don’t show their ups and downs. That’s also a managerial quality.”

Baylor knows only that his steadiness is a necessity.

“Some other guys who call themselves leaders are worried about their own personal production,” he said. “Sure, I get upset when I don’t get a hit, but I walk around and talk to everyone else. A lot of young players look and watch. Maybe things don’t go well all the time, but with 162 games, every day you have to come out and be one thing.”

Speaking of such things, he cannot understand how the team he so admires, the Orioles, lost a record 21 games in a row at the outset of the 1988 season.

That would not have happened with the Oriole players he played with, Baylor said. And it would never happen on any team of which he was a part.

“Not as long as I’m walking, talking and breathing,” he said.

DON BAYLOR

Baseball Player

Age: 41

Hometown: Ventura

High School: Stephen F. Austin High School, Austin, Tex.

Colleges: Miami-Dade Junior College, Blinn Junior College

Accomplishments:

* Only Angel to be named American League MVP, earning the honor in 1979 by hitting .296 with 36home runs and 139 RBIs as the Angels won their first division championship.

* In 17 major league seasons with Baltimore, Oakland, California, New York, Boston and Minnesota, averaged .260, with an average of 20 home runs and 75 RBIs.

* Had his finest postseason performance in the 1982 American League Championship Series, batting .294 with 10 RBIs for the Angels against Milwaukee. Tied ALCS records with five RBIs in Game 1 and a grand slam in Game 5. Holds ALCS record for most consecutive games with at least one hit (12).

* Played for World Series teams in his final three seasons, with Boston in 1986, Minnesota in 1987 and Oakland in 1988.

* Holds the major league career record for most times hit by a pitch (255) and the American League record for most times hit by a pitch in a season (35).

* Became third member of Angel Hall of Fame in May, joining Bobby Grich and Jim Fregosi.

* Batting coach for the Milwaukee Brewers, and interim manager for five games recently during Tom Trebelhorn’s five-game suspension for his part in a brawl against Seattle.

* Will be inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday at Disneyland Hotel.

AT A GLANCE What--10th annual Orange County Hall of Fame Banquet.

When--Thursday, July 19, 6 p.m.

Where--Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim.

Tickets--$100 each, $1,000 for table for 10.

Information--832-1113.

Inductees--Don Baylor, Paul Cleary, Nolan Cromwell and Steve Timmons.