With Mom’s Help, Vaughn Has Home Base Covered

It’s not every man who invites his mom to decorate his multimillion-dollar digs.

But superstar slugger Mo Vaughn--now in the second year of his six-year, $80-million contract with the Anaheim Angels--knew he could trust Shirley Vaughn to come up with the look he wanted at his Newport Beach home.

After all, the 32-year-old first baseman loved what she’d done with the 3-acre Boston estate he’d bought when he played for the Red Sox.

Not to mention the way she’d gone along with his decorating mandates when he was a kid.

“When he was only 9 years old, he chose his colors for his room,” says Shirley Vaughn, who, along with her husband, Leroy, has temporarily left a home in Virginia to take up baseball-season residence at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach. “Then, he wanted sunset colors. Now, along with his favorite earth tones, he still loves oranges and yellows. So I just went from that.”

Mo Vaughn was looking for land--lots of it--when he began to search for a water-oriented home in Newport Beach a year and a half ago.

He had acreage in Massachusetts; he wanted it in California.

Vaughn soon learned one of Southern California’s brutal real estate lessons: A few million gets you a big house with a breathtaking view, but no field of dreams.

“I found out quickly that you don’t get land here unless you’re up in the hills,” Vaughn says as he stands in his 7,000-square-foot home’s game room with its panorama of the Pacific. “But you can buy a beautiful view.”

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Vaughn is counting on that vista--and the classic, easygoing atmosphere created by his mother--to help him escape the pressures of the park.

“You get used to the pressure,” he says, flashing a smile. “But I’d been through a lot of turmoil in Boston [a protracted contract dispute and car accident] when I came here. And when I looked out the windows at the flowing water, it was calm. That’s helping me stay calm--and it’s what I like the most about this house.”

Shirley Vaughn, a retired grade school teacher who taught Mo to bat left-handed when he was 2, worked with Tony Luckino, a designer with Bloomingdale’s in Boston, on the furnishings. They had previously collaborated on her son’s Boston residence, where Mo lives off-season, using the same earth-tone color scheme.

To ensure variety at the two homes, they reversed the colors, she says. “Where we used a dark sofa in Boston, for example, we chose a light sofa for California.”

They turned her son’s $2.7-million West Coast home into a haven that is at once cozy and sophisticated.

Take the twin rust leather recliners that sit close to a TV off the brick-paved kitchen. There, Vaughn can kick back with a buddy and play video games--a favorite pastime.

Then take the two Tibetan carpets--one pale gold, the other a light toast shade--that sprawl like huge silk scarves across the wood floors of the formal living and dining areas.

Though his mother may have been able to picture him entertaining guests there--perhaps sipping his favorite Cristal champagne--he’s hesitant to step on the rugs.

“Don’t get me started about those rugs,” he says, scowling. “Do you know how much they cost? Thirty-two thousand each!”

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Enjoy, says Shirley Vaughn. Those exotic carpets provide the perfect backdrop for an elegant sofa--upholstered in gold silk chenille--and a handsome dining room table.

“Mo told me, ‘Mom, you don’t pay that much for stuff people are going to walk on!’ But I saw them and just loved them.”

Mo Vaughn may be having trouble adjusting to the luxury carpets, but he has nothing but praise for the king-size bed his mother chose for his master suite.

With its tufted chocolate leather head and footboards, the Ralph Lauren bed is a cocoon of comfort, he says.

“That’s the best thing she did,” he says as he enters the sun-filled room with its gleaming granite fireplace and built-in television.

Mo Vaughn draws the curtains to illustrate another of the room’s pluses: blackout draperies of the type used in Las Vegas hotel rooms.

Couldn’t get a good night’s rest without them, he says.

“I don’t go to sleep until 2 or 3 a.m. because I’m usually wound up. And then the light begins to stream in at about the time I’m getting ready to get a few hours.”

It’s in this room that Vaughn stores some of his most cherished possessions--baseball bats autographed by players such as Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Larry Walker, Tony Gwynn and Fred McGriff.

“Trading bats is one of the things we do,” he says of himself and his comrades. “I try to get the signatures of all the people I respect in the game.”

Neighbors--kids, mostly--frequently knock on Vaughn’s door to snag an autograph of their own.

They never strike out, he says. “I just step outside and sign them.”

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Conway can be reached at ann.conway@latimes.com.