Don Baylor, former Angels star, dies at 68

Don Baylor, the former California Angels slugger who took home the American League MVP award in 1979, died Monday morning following a long battle with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer, his son confirmed to Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman.

"Don passed from this earth with the same fierce dignity with which he played the game and lived his life," his wife, Rebecca, said in a statement provided to ESPN.

Baylor, a burly Texas native selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the second round of the 1967 amateur draft, spent parts of 19 seasons in the big leagues, many of them as one of the game's top hitters thanks to his prodigious power and uncanny ability to get on base via hit-by-pitch (he got plunked 267 times in his career, fourth-most in MLB history).

Across stints with the Orioles, Oakland Athletics, Angels, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Minnesota Twins, Baylor swatted 338 homers with a .777 OPS (118 OPS+), landing three Silver Slugger awards while also earning in 1979 an All-Star nod and the AL MVP award, having hit .296/.371/.530 with 36 homers, 33 doubles, and a league-leading 120 runs scored and 139 runs batted in. In 1987, the penultimate season of his career, Baylor, as a late-season addition, helped the Twins win the franchise's second World Series title.

Five years after retiring as a player, following two stints as a big-league hitting coach, Baylor received his first managerial job in the major leagues, becoming the first manager in Colorado Rockies history. He helmed the Rockies for six seasons, earning the National League Manager of the Year award in 1995, and later took over as manager of the Chicago Cubs in 2000 following another brief hitting coach gig. Baylor and the Cubs parted ways after the 2002 campaign, and he would hold various coaching positions with several teams over the following decade-plus.

"Throughout stints with 14 different Major League teams as a player, coach or manager, Don's reputation as a gentleman always preceded him," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.