Yankees’ Witt Is Making Disabled List His Second Home : Baseball: Pitcher’s career since leaving Angels has been filled with an infuriating pattern of pitching, then getting hurt.

If Mike Witt could pitch again, for an extended period of time, he knows everything would be OK.

All he needs is to snap off a few of those wicked curveballs and let fly a fastball or two. He just wants to walk out there and do what he always has done.

His body hasn’t allowed that.

Instead of pitching, Witt loped from one foul line to the other at Anaheim Stadium this weekend, running to stay in shape until he could throw again for the New York Yankees. He shagged a few fly balls during batting practice. He did a couple of test runs with his arm.

Exasperating chores, really.

“It seems like stuff has been happening left and right,” Witt said. “I’m just trying to get over the hump where I can consistently be out there every five days. That’s been tough for me to do the last couple of years.”

Nearly impossible, in fact.

It has been almost two years since Witt underwent elbow surgery to save his career. Two years of waiting and working. He finally made it back, only to be bothered by one setback after another.

Witt’s season has been filled with an infuriating pattern of starts and stops. He pitched, then got hurt. He pitched, then got hurt. He pitched, then got hurt.

The injuries have been more nagging than threatening, but that has made them all the more frustrating.

“I was never concerned about my health before,” said Witt, who will turn 33 in two weeks. “I was healthy and didn’t even think about it. Now the hard part is to keep my butt out there.”

There is a bit of urgency for Witt, who was acquired from the Angels for Dave Winfield in 1990. He has to keep his butt out there, because it’s on the line.

The Yankees have an option on him for the 1994 season, part of a three-year, $8-million contract that has netted the team little in return. Witt has pitched in only 11 major league games since signing the contract.

He is 3-2 with a 5.27 earned-run average this season and is now looking at a two-month run to salvage his career.

“I’ve got to put up some good starts here in the second half,” Witt said. “If they don’t pick up my option, that’s an indication I didn’t pitch too well. So no one is really going to want me.”

Said Yankee Manager Bucky Showalter: “I’m sure Mike feels that there’s some pressure there because he wants to take care of his family and continue to pitch in the major leagues. But we’re looking to get him well so he can help us win.”

Witt hasn’t been able to pitch since June 17, when tendinitis in his right shoulder forced him to go on the disabled list. It was the third time this season that an injury knocked him out of the rotation.

Witt will test his right shoulder today on the sidelines and throw a simulated game back in New York after the All-Star break. Then, it’s off to Columbus, the club’s triple-A team, for a rehabilitation stint.

“If I pitch well, I’ll be Yankee property,” Witt said. “If I don’t, I’ll be struggling for a job.”

Anxious thoughts for a man who was considered one of the best pitchers in the American League not long ago.

Witt won at least 15 games during a four-year stretch with the Angels, from 1984-87. He pitched a perfect game in 1984 and was 18-10 in 1986, finishing third in the American League Cy Young voting behind Roger Clemens and Ted Higuera.

He even pitched the Angels closer to the World Series than they have ever been. Witt had them within one out of the pennant when he was pulled by Manager Gene Mauch in Game 5 of the 1986 AL Championship Series.

What followed was the most disastrous moment in the Angels’ checkered existence. The Boston Red Sox rallied to win the game and then came back from a 3-2 deficit to win the series.

Witt has been on a slide ever since. By the time he was traded on May 11, 1990, he wasn’t even in the starting rotation.

“It was time to leave,” said Witt, who played at Servite High School. “I was on a downward trend.”

In his first season with the Yankees, Witt missed 55 games because of a sore elbow. It was the first time in his career he had gone on the DL.

Still, he finished strong. He made 11 consecutive starts, going 5-5, to finish the season with a 5-9 record. He impressed Yankee officials enough to earn the three-year deal.

Nothing went right after that.

A sore elbow delayed his 1991 season until June. Witt made only two starts before the elbow gave way. In his second start, he faced only four Minnesota Twins, throwing 19 pitches, before walking off the field in pain.

“It was out of the blue,” Witt said. “One game and it just blew out.”

The injury was severe. Witt underwent what is commonly called the “Tommy John Surgery.” He had a tendon transplanted from his left ankle to reconstruct the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow.

He spent the entire 1992 season in Tampa, rehabilitating with the Yankees’ rookie league team. Witt pitched in three games, then sat out the rest of the year with tendinitis in his elbow.

Still, he didn’t give up.

“I knew that no matter what I did as far as sacrifice and working out, that it would be worth it if I just came back,” Witt said. “And I never thought I wouldn’t come back.”

Witt arrived for spring training this season fit and ready. He had even regained his velocity.

“We were expecting him to come in and throw 87-88 miles per hour,” Yankee pitching coach Tony Cloninger said. “Mike was throwing 93 by his second start. We were real excited about that.”

Excitement gave way to frustration. Witt pulled a groin muscle in his third start of spring training. It’s been one trip after another to the doctor’s office ever since.

Against Cleveland in his next start, Witt was hit on the elbow by a line drive in the first inning. He missed 16 days.

Witt came back against Minnesota on June 17, but left the game after 5 1/3 innings and went straight onto the DL. He’s been there ever since.

“A lot of it has been a coincidence,” Cloninger said. “I mean, how can you figure on getting hit by a line drive? You can’t. That just doesn’t happen too often.”

But at this point, Witt is on the lookout for even the unusual.

“It’s been a weird year,” he said. “You get hurt and get healthy and think, ‘I’m not going to get hurt again.’ Then something else happens. Things just haven’t gone in my favor.”

When they have, Witt has shown flashes of his old self.

After laboring through four innings in his first major league start since 1991, he put together three solid games. Witt allowed only three earned runs over that time, going seven inning in each of the games.

By the end of May, he was 3-1 with a 4.33 ERA. Modest numbers, but they were good enough to keep him in the rotation--as long as he stayed healthy.