BASEBALL DAILY REPORT : ANGELS : Winfield Comfortable With Winner

Dave Winfield was an Angel for two seasons, too briefly to forge strong emotional ties. But he remembers Anaheim fondly, considering it his sanctuary after 10 tumultuous years in New York.

“For more than a decade I didn’t really enjoy going to the park because there was always something bad waiting for me,” Winfield said of his Yankee years. “Before that, in San Diego, the team was so bad it wasn’t fun. (With the Angels) I could come to the park and enjoy what I was doing.”

Winfield is doing an impressive job for Toronto, which signed him as a free agent last Dec. 19. The Angels bought out the last two years of his contract and tried to re-sign him at a lower salary to be their designated hitter, but he rejected that and took Toronto’s one-year, $2.3-million offer. Winfield, who on Tuesday hit his third and fourth home runs and increased his RBI total to 12, has no regrets. Nor do the Blue Jays, whose DHs last season produced only five homers and 56 RBIs.

“I had an opportunity in front of me where I could go where I could be comfortable and can win,” said Winfield, who is hitting .363 for the AL East leaders. “I’m not going to be playing in six, seven years, so being with a team that can win was really most important. They could have said, ‘We’re going to double your salary,’ in California, but I would have had to look at it real hard.”

Winfield, 41, started six successive games in right field before becoming the DH Tuesday.

Bert Blyleven, continuing his comeback from rotator cuff surgery, gave up two runs and five hits over six innings to earn credit for double-A Midland’s 4-2 victory Monday at Wichita. Blyleven, 41, is 2-2 with a 2.42 earned-run average and 21 strikeouts in 26 innings. . . . Von Hayes (strained left hamstring) didn’t start and probably will sit again today. . . . Since he was five for 41 on April 20, Gary Gaetti is eight for 22 and has a five-game hitting streak.