Easley Catches Blue Jays at Just the Right Time : Baseball: He shows signs of returning to his form of 1993, when he impressed people as a rookie.

For nearly 14 weeks of the baseball season, the Angels have waited for second baseman Damion Easley to join the party.

For most of the first half, the Angels have been scoring at a club-record pace, getting hits and runs batted in from a fistful of contributors ranging from Chili Davis and Tim Salmon to Rex Hudler and Spike Owen. But Easley, who showed potential in batting .313 in 73 games as a rookie in 1993, staggered through the ’94 season at .215, and has been fighting an extended slump this season that has threatened his starting job.

Maybe it was just seeing a bad staff at the right time. The Blue Jays are a bunch of broken wings; their earned-run average before Thursday’s game, 5.26, was the second worse in baseball.

Or maybe, just maybe, Easley is rediscovering his ’93 form. Although the average still hovers around .200, the 25-year-old New York native has driven in six runs the past three games, including a three-run homer in Thursday’s 10-1 victory.

“I feel I have been swinging well for a while now, I really do,” Easley said. “I could need some luck. I had one ball I also hit hard, and it went right back at the pitcher. That’s the way it’s been going.

“But my confidence is rising. I’ve been trying to get back to that mind set of 1993, when I had the confidence I could do anything I wanted and it would always work.”

His teammates, knowing Easley could add to an already potent lineup averaging just under six runs a game, are pulling for him.

“Once he starts to play well,” Tony Phillips said, “you won’t see him go back to those bad things he was doing. Sometimes you have to go through a hard time to figure out what you’ve been doing wrong.

“Only a few superstars never go through a a tough time. But look at [the Dodgers’ Jose] Offerman; now he knows what to do. The same’s going to happen with Damion.”

Jim Edmonds, who recently had a 23-game hitting streak, has been silently urging Easley along. “When you go through an extended slump, you start to wonder if you’re ever going to get a hit again,” Edmonds said. “Now he has to show he can do it night after night. But he can, even though he has gotten down on himself at times.”

Before Thursday’s game, Easley said hitting coach Rod Carew reminded him to attack the pitch--”catch the ball early in the swing,” Easley said. It paid off when he slugged Al Leiter’s first pitch into the lower left-field stands in the third inning during a seven-run outburst.

It was his fourth homer of the year, but his first in more than a month. It was also his first at Anaheim Stadium since he hit two against the White Sox’s Wilson Alvarez on Aug. 5, 1994. It was his third career three-run homer.

“It was a really big swing for us tonight,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said.

Now if only Easley--and the rest of the Angels--can get a bigger payoff in the second half.