For McGee, Timing Was Perfect : AL playoffs: In joining Oakland, the NL’s batting champion proves that you can go home again--if the time is right.

If he celebrated at all, Willie McGee most likely did it quietly.

From his second batting title, he doubtless derived the satisfaction of an artist for a work finely crafted, but he wouldn’t show that to television cameras and reporters, after the .335 average he left behind in the National League had withstood all challengers. The timing wasn’t right.

McGee himself would choose the time to revel in an accomplishment made singular by circumstance, and the time would be right.

Timing has been the essence of his success since his youth in Richmond, Calif., 10 miles north of Oakland, where he learned how and when to sneak past a strict father whose Pentecostal beliefs couldn’t dim Willie’s athletic dreams.

“My father would sit in the front desk (of his church) and when he got through counting the money, he’d fall asleep,” McGee once recalled. “That’s when I made my break. Every week I’d time it perfectly.”

And when the time came for the Oakland Athletics to find a center fielder to replace Dave Henderson, who needed knee surgery, it was McGee they plucked from St. Louis, sending the Cardinals outfielder Felix Jose, infielder Stan Royer and pitcher Darryl Green.

The Cardinals had been slow to reward McGee’s service of seven years and more than 1,100 games, and the time had come for him to leave the club he had four times represented in the All-Star game, helped bring three National League titles and a 1982 World Series victory.

It was time, as he approached his 32nd birthday, to come home.

“I enjoy myself each day here,” said McGee, who hit .274 in 29 games with the A’s for a combined average of .325 and a combined total of 199 hits. That left him 17 short of the 216 hits he collected in 1985, when his .353 average and 56 stolen bases brought him his first batting title and NL most valuable player honors.

“I have a chance to wake up and see my family every day,” McGee added. “This is something I’ve dreamed about, playing in the Bay Area, near home.”

It’s not clear whether A’s Manager Tony La Russa will choose McGee or Henderson as the starting center fielder Saturday night when the A’s face the Red Sox at Boston in the opener of the American League championship series, but it’s obvious that McGee has made a formidable team downright fearsome.

“He’s been exactly what we hoped he’d be. We needed somebody with a lot of experience to play center field, and he’s been outstanding,” La Russa said. “We knew his offensive skills, that he’s a switch-hitter and explosive, and he’s been everything we expected.”

Right fielder Jose Canseco said: “He’s given us depth. How many teams have two All-Star players who play center field? One (Henderson) has power, and one has speed. It works out perfect.”

McGee has always been perfectly embarrassed to discuss himself. When his three-run, inside-the-park home run clinched the 1982 NL East title for the Cardinals, he deflected credit from himself and thanked his teammates.

He thanked them in the playoffs by hitting .308 in a sweep of the Atlanta Braves, getting two triples, a homer, a single and five runs batted in. He thanked them again in Game 3 of the World Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, when he hit two homers and made spectacular catches to rob Paul Molitor and Gorman Thomas of extra-base hits.

“I’m just an average person doing his job,” he said of his feats. “It’s not that big a deal to me.”

Nor was it a big deal to him that he won the NL batting title a month after being traded to the American League. Lenny Dykstra of the Philadelphia Phillies was hitting .340 when McGee was traded, but Dykstra faded as the summer progressed.

“I can’t help but see (whether the average holds up) and I hear people talking about it, but that’s the only way I know,” McGee said shortly before the season ended. “It’s not life or death. It if happens, fine. It’s out of my control.”

Had he been able to control his destiny, he might have stayed in St. Louis. McGee, playing out a three-year, $4.1-million contract signed after the 1987 season--when he had a career-high 105 RBIs, hit .309 against the San Francisco Giants in the playoffs and .370 in the Cardinals’ seven-game World Series loss to the Twins--reportedly wanted a three-year, $9-million deal.

Cardinal General Manager Dal Maxvill, deciding which of eight prospective free agents to re-sign and seeing McGee beset by injuries and a .236 batting average in 1989, wasn’t eager to keep him.

“If it had been a fair offer, maybe I would have gone back,” McGee said. “They say every player wanted more than $3 million (a year), and that’s not the case. That’s not the main purpose for me. I just wanted to play and be left alone.”

He played well offensively for St. Louis this year, hitting in a career-high 22 consecutive games between July 5 and Aug. 1, but he committed 16 errors in the outfield. The offending glove ended up in the stands after he flung it away; McGee ended up in Oakland.