Baseball ’90 PREVIEW : Downing Reigns as Angels’ Self-Made Survivor : Longevity: After 12 up-and-down seasons in Anaheim, he keeps playing and hoping for a chance to lessen the pain with a championship.

While many of his teammates were sleep-walking through the first intrasquad game of the spring, Brian Downing was sliding into second and ripping a hole in his pants.

Like Tina Turner, Downing never, ever , does anything nice and easy. He has barreled headlong through 17 seasons in the major leagues, surviving with a combination of savvy and brawn, often staggering but refusing to fall.

And Downing is the embodiment of the Angel experience, a player who in many ways mirrors the franchise for which he has labored the past 12 seasons. He’s a bare-knuckles brawler in a finesse game and, like the Angels, has achieved his greatest successes through brute offensive force.

At 39, he’s the oldest player in the majors who has yet to make it to the World Series; there are scars on his psyche from the near misses of 1979, ’82 and ‘86, which left the deepest wound. (“If I played 10 more years and we won it all every year, it still wouldn’t wash away that pain,” Downing says).

Indeed, he’s often intense to the point of brooding. His glare--and on one occasion his bat--have chased away many a sportswriter. Even to some of his teammates, Downing remains an enigma.

“Brian, well, he’s just Brian,” said one Angel, shrugging, “but if I ever have a meaningful conversation with him, I’ll let you know.”

Still, you don’t have to understand Downing to respect him.

“Certainly, there are people with more natural ability, but Brian Downing just will not let himself fail,” General Manager Mike Port said. “He’s an example to those with more capabilities that you have no excuse for not getting the best out of yourself. To be compared to Brian, that would be the ultimate compliment for a baseball player.”

Downing’s lunging swing might not be pretty and his stride on the basepaths won’t remind anyone of Carl Lewis. But if you’re management, you’ve got to love the guy’s work ethic.

“Any time a player is pretty much self-made, you have to admire him greatly,” Manager Doug Rader said. “Most of us cannot work at that level. Most of us are lazy by nature. But he’s done some fantastic things with his career and you have to admire the work that goes into that.

“Brian is every inch a man.”

Over the years, the man has been a barometer for the Angels. He has ridden this roller coaster to breathtaking heights that were invariably followed by nauseating nose dives. He has been with the Angels as they rose to the American League Championship Series three times. And he has endured each of the three following-season crashes, when they finished a total of 71 games out of first.

When he has been at his best, so have the Angels. In ‘79, when the franchise won its first AL West title, Downing hit .326. In ‘82, he hit 28 home runs. In ‘86, he drove in 95 runs.

Brian Downing is embarking on his 13th season with a halo on his hat. It’s hard to believe that almost-shoulder-length locks fell out of his first Angel cap. Now, there’s a trace of gray underneath.

Recently, the Angels’ reigning patriarch reluctantly agreed to relive the past and ponder the future. What follows is a most introspective view of the past dozen years.

Buckle your seat belts, it’s a bumpy ride.

THE HEADY ‘70s

Downing recently had completed his fifth less-than-spectacular season with the Chicago White Sox and was working out in a health club near his Yorba Linda home on Dec. 5, 1977 when he heard the news.

He had been traded with pitchers Chris Knapp and Dave Frost to the Angels for outfielders Bobby Bonds and Thad Bosley and pitcher Rich Dotson.

“All I could think about was that I was coming home to Anaheim,” he said. “I was working out when I heard about the deal and my strength went up enormously. I was on Cloud 9.

“But the television newscasts were pretty critical of the trade and my joy quickly turned when they started ripping me. After all, the Angels were giving up Bobby Bonds and I thought Thad Bosley was a great prospect at the time.

“The pitchers were the focus of the trade for the Angels, I was just along for the ride. But still, I was nervous. There was a lot of intimidation because of the high quality people they gave up . . . and I really wasn’t much of a player.”

Not everyone on the Angels welcomed Downing home with open arms. He began the season platooning behind the plate with Terry Humphrey because Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana prefered throwing to Humphrey.

“Terry was catching Ryan and Tanana and I was catching the other three starters,” Downing said. “(Manager Jim) Fregosi (who replaced Dave Garcia after 46 games in ‘78) finally put me back there every day, but I could see where Nolan and Frank were coming from. They were superstar pitchers who wanted to throw to somebody they knew. And it was tough because it seemed like every time you looked up in those days, the Angels had a new catcher.

“There’s an intricate balance between a catcher and a pitcher and I was basically just an offensive player playing catcher. My primary focus always has been hitting. It’s not that my heart wasn’t in it, it’s just that I was never much of a finesse catcher. I was pretty aggressive. I liked to charge right after the hitters, sort of a here-it-is-now-hit-it style.”

The Angels finished 87-75 in 1978 and Downing admitted that he harbored great expectations for the following year. However, 1979 turned out to be better than he ever dared dream.

“The off-season after the ’78 season was my first real year of free-weight training,” he said. “I accomplished some things in the weight room that changed my life, really. I never had much self-confidence and I made some numerical goals that year that gave me some real self-esteem. There are a lot of parallels between the weight room and life.

“I made this one particular goal on the last workout before I left for spring training. I remember thinking all day about how important it was to accomplish what I set out to do and when I did it, I left for training camp on a natural life high.”

Downing, equipped with a new open stance that helped him pick up the ball earlier as well as an upper body that made him look like a Bulgarian weightlifter in double knits, was soon to reach new altitudes on the hit parade. For a while, Downing and the Angels were No. 1 with a bullet.

“Everything just clicked,” he said, smiling. “It just snowballed. Everyone did great. The offense was spectacular and the pitching wasn’t bad. But it was so much fun because the game was never over. We were known for those magical last-minute victories.”

Downing’s season reached an early peak about the time of the All-Star break. He was hitting .352 and had been named to his first--and only--All-Star team. And the Angels were playing a series with the Yankees.

“The first game was Nolan Ryan’s famous near no-hitter (an eventual one-hitter that the Angels won, 6-1). In the second game, Don Baylor homered in the eighth off Goose Gossage and then hit a three-run homer off him in the ninth to tie the game. (Downing scored the winning run in the 12th). In the third game, Bobby Grich hit a two-run homer with two out in the ninth and we won, 5-4. Then I left for the All-Star game in Seattle.

“It was something really special. That week was like the epitome for me.”

The Angels won the division by three games and lost to Baltimore in the then-best-of-five league championship series. The Orioles won the first two games in Baltimore, 3-0, and 9-8.

“If we could have won one of those, I really would have liked our chances in Game Five with Nolan Ryan pitching at 5 o’clock in Anaheim,” Downing said. “But that one didn’t hurt so much. I think a lot of us felt like we had a good season anyway . . . and that’s probably why we lost.”

ACHES OF THE ‘80s

“On my first at-bat in 1980, I hit a grand slam,” Downing said. “I thought, ‘This is going to be a great year.’ Four days later, I got my ankle shattered (during a collision at home plate with Oakland’s Rickey Henderson) and missed almost the whole year.”

It was a lost year for the entire franchise. The Angels lost 95 games as their players dropped onto the disabled list with a stunning succession of injuries.

“It happened so fast. Baylor, (Dan) Ford, myself all went down fast. I remember one road trip where nine players stayed back for treatment. We just lost too many pivotal players and we didn’t have the people to come in and help out.”

The Angels staggered through the strike-shortened ’81 season, too, but their famous ball-crushing offense peaked in 1982, Gene Mauch’s first full year as manager.

“I loved leading off for that team,” said Downing, who has been a reluctant No. 1 hitter off and on for years. “Getting to play with all those future Hall of Famers was a highlight of my life. I mean Baylor, Reggie (Jackson), (Rod) Carew, (Fred) Lynn, Grich and (Doug) DeCinces all in the same lineup.

“The pitching was only so-so, but that was a great, great offensive team. If we had that offense and the (pitching) staff we have now, nobody would ever stop us.”

The 1982 Angels were stopped, though, by an equally explosive offense when the Brewers beat them in the league championship series. Bob McClure, now an Angel reliever, picked up a 4-3 victory in the fifth and deciding game at Milwaukee.

The Angels wallowed in post-good-season depression and lost 92 games in 1983. They managed to finish second in both of the next two seasons, however, falling just one game short in 1985.

Now an outfielder, Downing began a stretch in 1984 when he would hit 20 or more homers and drive in an average of 83 runs every season until last year. He set a major league record for consecutive errorless games (244) in 1983 and then went on another 229-game stretch that ended in 1985.

By 1986, Mauch was back for his second term as manager and the Angels were poised for a third shot at the World Series, not to forget a third agonizing shot into Brian Downing’s heart.

The Angels and Red Sox split the first two games of the seven-game 1986 playoffs. The Angels took a 3-1 lead in games after sweeping the first two at Anaheim Stadium before Boston rallied for a 7-6, 11-inning victory in Game No. 5.

“All the talk about (the late Donnie Moore’s) one pitch (that Dave Henderson hit for a game-tying home run) was ridiculous,” Downing says. “To put that loss in Donnie’s lap is a joke. We came back to tie the game, didn’t we? And we came this close to blowing open Game 6 in the first inning back in Boston.”

Then the Red Sox rolled to an 8-1 victory in the final game.

“I’ll never forget those images,” Downing said. “I didn’t sleep well for a long, long while. The nightmares kept coming. There’s a permanent scar and I’ll never be able to come to grips with it.”

Downing grieved as much for the long-tormented Mauch as he did for himself. The former Angel manager was one of the few people who had been able to establish a genuine rapport with Downing.

“He always knew exactly what was on my mind, exactly what I was trying to do with a pitcher or the way I approached an at-bat,” Downing said. “It was uncanny really. We could communicate with facial signals. Mauch really understood me.

“It really hurt that we couldn’t win it for him. And we should have. That was the best overall team we’ve ever had.”

ON TO THE ‘90s

Brian Downing flexes his biceps and prepares to face a new decade.

And no one seems ready to give up on Downing until he’s ready to give up on himself. So who knows how long this saga might continue?

Stay tuned.

Downing credits his longevity to two factors: weight training and the trade to the Angels.

“If it weren’t for the trade to California, I would have been out of baseball by 1980,” he said. “There’s no question about that. And if I hadn’t started weight training, I wouldn’t have made it into the ‘80s. That’s the ‘80s . Never mind the ‘90s.

“I’m not saying weight training is for everyone. But my style is not predicated on looking pretty. I’ve never been able to master the idea of body leverage and without weight training, I couldn’t hit the ball within 20 feet of the warning track. And the mental aspect that has gone along with the weight training has been just as vital.

“The rest is just a matter of identifying your capabilities and limitations and adjusting accordingly.”

It sounds simple enough, but remember, nothing is easy for Brian Downing. And so it is with the question of retirement.

“Bobby (Grich) retired the day after the ’86 season ended and I could understand how he felt. I wanted to do the same thing myself. It was so tough to play through that pain.

“It’s crossed my mind every year since we lost in the playoffs, but every time I talk about it, my friends--and, believe or not I do have a few friends--say, ‘If you quit, this will be the year they win it.’ ”

So far, Downing has been unable to force himself to walk away from the game that has given him so much joy and so much agony. “The first baseball game I ever saw was the third game of the 1959 World Series between the Dodgers and White Sox,” he said. “There were 90-some thousand people there and I can remember feeling the electricity in the air. I could feel it from the top of my head down to my toes.

“That left an indelible impression on me. That got me going and I’ve never lost it.”

Certainly, he has never lost the desire to win, to win it all, a void in his career that will haunt him until he can rub his thumb across the inside of his finger and feel the reassuring lump of that championship ring.

“That ring is my sole motivation now,” he said. “To be a champion in major league baseball. I envision it as the exact opposite feeling as the one in ’86.

“Just once, I’d like to go from the floor to the ceiling.”

BRIAN DOWNING’S MAJOR LEAGUE CAREER

YR TEAM AVG G AB H 2B 3B HR RBI SB 1973 Chicago .178 34 73 13 1 0 2 4 0 1974 Chicago .225 108 293 66 12 1 10 39 0 1975 Chicago .240 138 420 101 12 1 7 41 13 1976 Chicago .256 104 317 81 14 0 3 30 7 1977 Chicago .284 69 169 48 4 2 4 25 1 1978 California .255 133 412 105 15 0 7 46 3 1979 California .326 148 509 166 27 3 12 75 3 1980 California .290 30 93 27 6 0 2 25 0 1981 California .249 93 317 79 14 0 9 41 1 1982 California .281 158 623 175 37 2 28 84 2 1983 California .246 113 403 99 15 1 19 53 1 1984 California .275 156 539 148 28 2 23 91 0 1985 California .263 150 520 137 23 1 20 85 5 1986 California .267 152 513 137 27 4 20 95 4 1987 California .272 155 567 154 29 3 29 77 5 1988 California .242 135 484 117 18 2 25 64 3 1989 California .283 142 544 154 25 2 14 59 0 Total .266 2,018 6,796 1,807 307 24 234 934 48

CAREER MARKS RUNS SCORED/CAREER Brian Downing: 842 Jim Fregosi: 691 Bobby Grich: 601 Don Baylor: 481 Rod Carew: 474 Doug DeCinces: 404 Albie Pearson: 374 Wally Joyner: 341 Sandy Alomar: 341 Reggie Jackson: 331

GAMES PLAYED/CAREER Brian Downing: 1,565 Jim Fregosi: 1,429 Bobby Grich: 1,222 Bob Boone: 968 Bob Rodgers: 932 Rod Carew: 834 Dick Schofield: 827 Don Baylor: 824 Bobby Knoop: 803 Sandy Alomar: 795

AT-BATS/CAREER Brian Downing: 5,524 Jim Fregosi: 5,244 Bobby Grich: 4,100 Don Baylor: 3,105 Rod Carew: 3,080 Sandy Alomar: 3,054 Bob Boone: 3,033 Bob Rodgers: 3,033 Doug DeCinces: 2,884 Bobby Knoop: 2,617

HITS/CAREER Brian Downing: 1,498 Jim Fregosi: 1,408 Bobby Grich: 1,103 Rod Carew: 968 Don Baylor: 813 Doug DeCinces: 765 Sandy Alomar: 758 Bob Boone: 742 Bob Rodgers: 704 Wally Joyner: 676

DOUBLES/CAREER Brian Downing: 264 Jim Fregosi: 219 Bobby Grich: 183 Doug DeCinces: 149 Rod Carew: 140 Don Baylor: 140 Wally Joyner: 121 Bob Boone: 115 Bob Rodgers: 114

TRIPLES/CAREER Jim Fregosi: 70 Mickey Rivers: 32 Bobby Knoop: 25 Dick Schofield: 23 Gary Pettis: 23 Rod Carew: 22 Brian Downing: 20 Bobby Grich: 20 Bob Rodgers: 18

HOME RUNS/CAREER Brian Downing: 208 Bobby Grich: 154 Don Baylor: 141 Doug DeCinces: 130 Reggie Jackson: 123 Jim Fregosi: 115 Leon Wagner: 91 Wally Joyner: 85 Fred Lynn: 71 Jack Howell: 68

RUNS BATTED IN/CAREER Brian Downing: 795 Bobby Grich: 557 Jim Fregosi: 546 Don Baylor: 523 Doug DeCinces: 481 Wally Joyner: 381 Reggie Jackson: 374 Bob Boone: 318 Bob Rodgers: 288

HIGHEST AVERAGE/SEASON Rod Carew: .339 in 1983 Rod Carew: .331 in 1980 Alex Johnson: .329 in 1970 Brian Downing: .326 in 1979 Rod Carew: .319 in 1982 Johnny Ray: .306 in 1988 Rod Carew: .305 in 1981 Bobby Grich: .304 in 1981 Albie Pearson: .304 in 1963

RUNS SCORED/SEASON Don Baylor: 120 in 1979 Albie Pearson: 115 in 1962 Carney Lansford: 114 in 1979 Brian Downing: 110 in 1987 Brian Downing: 109 in 1982 Devon White: 103 in 1987 Don Baylor: 103 in 1978 Bobby Bonds: 103 in 1977 Wally Joyner: 100 in 1987

BASES ON BALLS/SEASON Brian Downing: 106 in 1987 Albie Pearson: 96 in 1961 Albie Pearson: 95 in 1962 Jim Fregosi: 93 in 1969 Reggie Jackson: 92 in 1986 Albie Pearson: 92 in 1963 Brian Downing: 90 in 1986 Brian Downing: 86 in 1982 Reggie Jackson: 85 in 1982