If Don Baylor were a horse, they would have shot him, as in the title of the 1969 Jane Fonda film, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

Baylor might have been considered a horse in his playing days, but he apparently has turned into a broken-down old coach. How else explain that on his team’s opening night he broke a leg catching Vladimir Guerrero’s ceremonial first pitch?

Before the curtain goes up on Broadway shows, it is customary for the actors to tell one another, “Break a leg,” but they don’t mean it literally. It’s a figurative way of saying “Have a good show.”

But Baylor, their hitting coach, really broke a leg, and the Anaheim Angels didn’t even have a good game. They had a bad game, losing to the Seattle Mariners, 10-3.

In his 17-year playing career, Baylor was as tough as any player. He was hit by 267 pitches, more than any other American League player and more than any player since 1900 except for Craig Biggio, who was hit 285 times.

Baylor’s injury was bizarre, the most bizarre anyone could recall resulting from a ceremonial first pitch. The Angels’ new hitting coach was positioned behind home plate for Guerrero’s first pitch, their connection being that they are the only two Angels’ players to have won the A.L. most valuable player award.

Guerrero, who had just signed a one-day contract to retire as a member of the Angels, threw his pitch but not for a strike. It was more like a pitch Guerrero would have swung at in his free-swinging playing days. It sailed downward just outside the left-handed batter’s box.

The 64-year-old Baylor reached across his body to snare the errant toss, and his right leg collapsed under him. He tried to stand up but couldn’t and two members of the team’s training staff helped him off the field.

Later, when his wife Becky asked him how he was doing, Baylor said, “I’m OK as long as they don’t take me out back and shoot me.”

“He’s in surgery now,” Becky Baylor said Tuesday as doctors operated on Baylor at the University of California Irvine Medical Center near Angel Stadium. “They’re putting in a plate and some screws. He’ll be on crutches for a while.”

It was not known how much of the season Baylor would miss, but knowing him for years as I have – I have to admit that he is one of my favorite players whom I have cove red – I am certain he will be back with the Angels as soon as his doctor gives him the green light.

His on-field work might be limited, but Baylor will find a way to perform at least some his duties. Before games, he could ride a cart around the field, and during games, he wouldn’t have to leave the dugout.

“He’s ready to go,” Becky Baylor said the day after the operation, exaggerating perhaps only slightly. “He’s doing OK. His attitude is the same – ‘tell me what to do.’”

Baylor was on the disabled list only once as a player. In 1980 he missed seven weeks in May and June after breaking a bone in his left wrist and suffering a dislocated toe on his left foot, playing 90 games, fewest of his 17 full seasons.

Post career, however, Baylor was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancerous disease that affects bone marrow. There was concern that the illness could force him to retire from baseball, but he successfully underwent a bone marrow transplant and resumed his career.

Some people speculated that the myeloma had something to do with his broken leg, but Becky said doctors rejected that link.

“The doctor said it was the torque and twist of his body,” she said.

The femur, the longest bone in the body, was the bone that broke, and it did so in the area of the thigh.

What did contribute to the broken leg was Baylor’s change of jobs. He had worked the previous three years as the hitting coach of the Arizona Diamondback but switched to the Angels this year.

“At the end of last season,” Becky Baylor related, “the coaches hadn’t been told anything. Everyone was waiting. We were under the impression he would be asked back but didn’t know. The Angels offered a two-year deal. He felt if he had a chance to go back to the Angels he’d love to. This two-year deal was too good to turn down.”

Had Baylor not changed jobs, he would not have been in position to catch Guerrero’s first pitch in Anaheim. Baylor, instead, might have been with the Diamondbacks. In that case, he would have had to make the Diamondbacks’ season-opening trip to Australia. He might have suffered leg cramps. But they would have been better than a broken leg.