DeCinces’ Field of Expertise : Third-Base Skills Were His Forte

The Angels have been a step away from the World Series three times in their 32-year history.

Doug DeCinces was on the field every time.

In 1986 against Boston, DeCinces hit a home run off Roger Clemens in Game 4, a game the Angels came back from three runs to win. Then he endured the excruciating frustration of the Game 5 loss, when the Angels were a strike away from the pennant before Dave Henderson’s home run off Donnie Moore extended the game. Boston ended up winning the series in seven games.

In 1982, DeCinces helped the Angels win the American League West with the finest offensive season of his career. He batted .301, hit 30 home runs and drove in 97 runs that year, playing for a team he considers the best, man for man, he was ever on.

“We had Carew at first and Grich at second, Foli and Burleson at short, I was at third, Boone behind the plate,” DeCinces said. “We had Downing, Lynn and Reggie Jackson in the outfield. Don Baylor DHing. Pretty strong.”

The Angels won the first two games of the league championship series against Milwaukee, then lost the series in five.

And in 1979, when the Angels lost to Baltimore in four games, DeCinces was there, in his accustomed place at third.

But he was a winner that time. He was the Oriole third baseman, and it was his spectacular rally-killing defensive play that helped squelch the Angels in the clinching game.

“If he doesn’t make the play,” Angel Manager Jim Fregosi said after the game, “it’s a whole different situation.”

The Angels were trailing, 3-0, in the fifth inning of the Saturday afternoon game at Anaheim Stadium. They loaded the bases with one out, and then Jim Anderson smashed a Scott McGregor changeup down the third-base line.

But DeCinces leaped to his right, speared the ball on one hop, stepped on third and threw to first for an inning-ending double play.

The final score was 8-0.

If any one play could have pulled DeCinces out of Brooks Robinson’s shadow in Baltimore, that was the one.

Three years later, DeCinces had been traded from the Orioles to the Angels, and the old comparisons no longer applied.

“Two separate worlds,” said DeCinces, who played his final season with the Angels in 1987 and will be inducted into the Orange County Sports Hall of Fame on Tuesday. “I felt a relief, I would have to say, about coming out to California. I got rid of the Brooks Robinson syndrome 100%. I think my peers who I played against never put that label on me, but I felt as long as I was in Baltimore, there was always going to be that tag on the back of my uniform.

“When I came out to California, I felt that the fans that were becoming fans of mine were appreciating what I was doing. There was not anything to do with anyone else, or the comparison factor.”

Years later, the Orioles have had more trouble replacing DeCinces than anyone would have foretold.

“I really kid Brooks all the time,” DeCinces said. “I say, ‘Brooks, I don’t understand the fact that I took all this heat and all this criticism to replace you, and yet I did it and it was one of my main accomplishments. But how come it’s taken 43 to replace me?’ ”

“Now when you go back, they’ve even forgotten the fact that somebody did take Brooks’ place. The announcers always go, ‘Well it’s taken 44 third basemen since. . . .’ And I always kind of chuckle and say, ‘Wait a minute, there were eight years there that I did it.’ I’m still second on the Orioles’ all-time list.”

The Angels have had their trouble replacing DeCinces, too. He played 749 games at third for them, nearly 200 more than any other man. Jack Howell, who was supposed to replace DeCinces, was traded in 1991 and is now playing in Japan.

DeCinces carved out a reputation with his glove, but he left his mark on the team’s offensive records as well. He is still listed among the Angels’ top 10 in a dozen or so career and season bests, including most extra-base hits, with 77 in 1982.

He played six seasons for the Angels, and was a member of two divisional championship teams. He was an Angel during a period when the franchise spent more time near the top of the standings than dragging bottom.

“It is sad,” said DeCinces, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, lives in Newport Beach and still buys Angel season tickets. “I felt at that time that the Angels were without a doubt--you know, even when we weren’t picked, we were right there. There was a certain caliber of player that was there and the style of baseball was on that upper tier. I mean, we did what it took to win.

“I think that the fond memories I have with the Angels are winning games that we should have never won, but we won because of the confidence we had in each other. Guys like Brian Downing, Bobby Grich, Bob Boone. Being able to have that feeling that under any circumstances--Reggie Jackson--we could pull ourselves together and win.”

DeCinces did not applaud many of the moves the Angel organization made during the mid-to-late 1980s, and he calls the past few seasons “unfortunate” after the successes of ‘79, ’82 and ’86.

He says he is on friendly terms with the Angel organization now, thanks in part to the efforts of club president Rich Brown.

That wasn’t the case after 1987, when he was released 11 days before the end of the season because the team could save $141,667 by waiving him before it was over. The antagonism he felt for the club was mostly over what he considered bad-faith negotiations and unfair treatment from former General Manager Mike Port, who was fired in 1991.

“I have a lot of opinions and I’ve seen a lot of different things,” DeCinces said. “I think the organization now is trying to correct some of the things that brought them to where they are today.”

DeCinces, by all appearances, is thriving today. With real estate slumping, he has put his property management business on a back burner and has delved into numerous aspects of sports marketing with an Irvine-based company called DeCinces Sports Productions. DeCinces and his partner, Mike Berkus, went into business in December and are already deeply involved in coordinating sporting events, numerous types of consulting and the memorabilia business.

DeCinces’ name can also be found on movie screens around the country. He was a baseball consultant for the movie “Mr. Baseball,” a film about a major leaguer playing in Japan. DeCinces, who spent a season in Japan after leaving the Angels, believes he was able to influence the tone of the movie by inspiring actor Tom Selleck to persuade the higher-ups that baseball players are not all lazy, drunken egomaniacs.

He also helped teach Selleck to hit.

“He’s a natural athlete and he was real dedicated,” DeCinces said. “With the combination of the two, he responded very well to instruction, and he actually hits the balls out of the ballpark. That’s not movie spoof.”

DeCinces also continues to be involved in charity work, long after it could be considered an important way to boost his career.

This week, he hosted a golf tournament benefiting the Orangewood Children’s Foundation, of which he is a board member. “These kids really need an opportunity to have a dream like I did, a future,” he said.

DeCinces believes his business abilities probably were developed while he was still a player. He was his team’s representative to the Major League Players Assn. for many years, and as the American League player representative was involved in labor negotiations during the 1981 strike.

His positions--and his typical outspoken nature--earned him few friends with management, and perhaps some enemies.

But being close to labor negotiations made a lasting impression, he says.

“I learned about integrity,” he said. “(You learn to watch for) whether somebody’s telling a lie or what doesn’t follow suit. You really learn that doing the best you can, and keeping your personal integrity, is probably the single most important thing you can learn in any negotiations.”

His 15 years in the major leagues took a physical toll, most critically on DeCinces’ back. A 1983 back injury left DeCinces with pain he still endures today.

“I golf,” he said. “I just can’t carry my clubs around the golf course. I don’t play tennis. I can’t do any running. I can’t do any pounding exercises or anything that’s jarring. I know I’m going to face back surgery (double bone fusion) sooner or later, and that’s a year out of my life I’m not ready to take. I only know it would be a full year of getting back to where I would want to be. So I’ve made adjustments.”

During his playing career, doctors looked at X-rays of DeCinces’ back and recommended surgery. But they told him if he could take the pain, he could play. He played--sometimes by taking more than a dozen cortisone shots a season.

“If I look back at my career, if there was anything I could change, it would be not to have had a bad back,” DeCinces said. “I always wondered what maybe I could have accomplished over the whole course of my career. But whether you can be satisfied or not is not a question any more, because it’s reality. I’ve come to grips with that.”

Now another DeCinces--Tim, an 18-year-old freshman at UCLA who played at Corona del Mar High--is striving after the same goals his father had.

“It’s exciting to have a son that loves the game of baseball. I mean, absolutely loves it,” DeCinces said. “He has dedicated himself to the point where he’s made himself a real good ballplayer. And I don’t think he’s had a tremendous gift. He’s not a fast runner. He’s a kid that when I see play, knows the game better than a lot of people. To watch his desire and love for it is fun. And he’s being successful. I know his dream is to go on and become a professional baseball player, and whatever I can do to help him do that, I will.

“I’ve always let him know what the odds are like. He’s always had this childhood dream, like I had. I was able to fulfill it. I was the 15th player in history to hit a home run in my first at-bat in the World Series. I remember, gosh, when I was a kid, all the times I stepped up in the sandlots or whatever and you’re playing over-the-line and you say, OK, this is the World Series. Then you do that.

“I grew up playing ball wherever I could play. My son’s very much the same way. He’s got a lot of those traits.

“By the same token. I always tell him, hey the odds are difficult, prepare yourself.”

The father can only hope the son has half as much to look back on as he does.

“This is a real honorable time for me,” DeCinces said. “I know I’m not going to be in the Hall of Fame of baseball, but I spent six years here with the Angels and performance-wise, I felt that I gave a lot. I played with a lot of back pain and a lot of problems and I still gave my best. Now is a time to look back, and some people are saying thank you. And I’m saying thank you at the same time.”