BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : The Swing for 3,000: Brett’s Goodby Wave?

Sometime this winter George Brett will sit down with his family and friends to decide if he will return to the Kansas City Royals in 1993, which would mark the 20th anniversary of his major league debut.

That decision might have become considerably easier Wednesday night when Brett collected hits in his first four trips to the plate against the Angels at Anaheim Stadium to become only the 18th player to collect 3,000 for his career.

What a way to go--if, indeed, Brett decides to go.

Forget that left fielder Rob Ducey, who long ago left his touted potential at Toronto’s triple-A Syracuse farm club, bungled a first-inning flare that became Brett’s 2,997th hit.

Forget that second baseman Ken Oberkfell, who covers less range than a singing cowboy named Gene Autry does at 85, couldn’t get to Brett’s soft ground ball in the third inning that became hit No. 2,998.

This was a bravura performance characteristic of a career that has included a succession of them and should be remembered, hopefully, as Brett’s way of saying goodby.

He has nothing more to prove, nothing more to accomplish, really.

He has hit .370 in a World Series and .390 across a long series of 162 games. He has hit three home runs in a playoff game and a three-run homer in a game that put the Royals into their first World Series.

He has been on the disabled list 10 times and still managed to hit .300 or better 11 times, drive in 100 or more runs four times and slug 20 or more home runs eight times.

There is nothing left.

At 39, Brett’s next assignment, after today’s series finale and the last three games of 1992 in Kansas City, should be as a Royals’ vice president, biding time until his induction into the Hall of Fame.

The events of Wednesday night only underscored his credentials.

Shaking off the strained shoulder that had forced him to miss the first two games of the series and had cynics suggesting that he was trying to save No. 3,000 for the final weekend in Kansas City, Brett took a few pregame swings on a batting tee, deemed himself less than 100% but able to play, then delivered the 54th four-hit game of his career and fifth of a season in which he was talked out of quitting in a miserable April by his brother, Ken, and Manager Hal McRae.

The bloop that Ducey failed to catch and the grounder that Oberkfell came up with only served to get Brett rolling. He roped a single to center in the fifth inning, then reached 3,000 on a wicked one-hopper that ate up Oberkfell and would have done the same to Jose Lind.

Brett was immediately engulfed by teammates at first base, but he would say later that he didn’t necessarily see the faces surrounding him. His thoughts, he would say, were on three people who helped shape his career and might have been watching, he hoped, from a more heavenly seat: his father, Jack; hitting instructor Charlie Lau and onetime Kansas City manager Dick Howser.

He would think, too, of the influence of former manager Whitey Herzog, now an Angel vice president, and he would say that he didn’t know what the future holds as far as continuing his career, that he would let this sink in before attempting to reach a decision.

One factor in that decision could be--and, perhaps, should be--that the four for five of Wednesday night only served to raise his batting average to .282, 26 points below that of his career.

The .282 might satisfy the majority of today’s players, might net them a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract, but Brett has acknowledged that it is far below his high standards and not much fun.

He has acknowledged that pitchers are now striking him out on less than high heat, that he is being embarrassed far too often.

Combine that with the fact that he is now married and a soon-to-be father, that the Royals seem destined for another long season in 1993, that he is guaranteed seven years as a Kansas City vice president and that 3,000 is now reality. . . .

All of that is the stuff of retirement for a player who should make the cortisone shot he received Tuesday the last he needs, who should go out on the high of Wednesday night and the salute he is almost certain to receive in a sold-out Royals Stadium this weekend.

He is one of the last of a breed, having spent his entire career in Kansas City, and the fans there were giving him ovations even when he was hitting .150 in April.

McRae and Ken Brett convinced him he wasn’t a quitter, and he came back, as he has so often, to achieve the hallmark statistic that is 3,000. George Brett’s career has never been about statistics, but having this behind him, having achieved the one he found himself wanting, there is no reason to come back again.