Kyle Goon: Chris Davis’ Orioles career ended on a low. Only now can he appreciate the highs.

It had been years since he last stood on the field in front of a crowd at Camden Yards, and Chris Davis wasn’t sure how he’d be received.

Twice he led the major leagues in home runs, racking up 253 as an Oriole. He was an All-Star in 2013, a Home Run Derby contestant and a power bat for the teams that defined the 2010s and brought the Orioles the closest they had been to the World Series in decades.

But, because of the difficult way his career ended, Davis felt a prickle of anxiety as he sat shoulder to shoulder with other Orioles of the past for Adam Jones’ induction into the franchise’s Hall of Fame last year. But, as the camera panned to him, the crowd roared and applauded. Davis waved back, slightly bemused.

It was the kind of welcome a franchise hero gets, which is not always how Davis thought of himself after he retired in 2021.

“It was kind of closure for me, to be honest with you,” he said Friday. “I think it was an opportunity for me to kind of sit down and say, ‘You know what, I don’t have to just only think about this part of my career.’ It was a journey here. I spent a decade in this uniform.”

As Davis is inducted into the Orioles Hall of Fame this weekend (along with pitcher Storm Davis, a member of the 1983 World Series champions), there are many pieces to his legacy and his best teams that linger. Although one of them is the massive salary the Orioles will continue to pay well into the future, many more happy memories are etched into the park itself — including the 11 plaques marking the home runs he crushed onto Eutaw Street.

There were players you could argue were more critical to the competitive teams of the 2010s, but none was more awe-inspiring than Davis, with his massive frame and powerful swing. Under manager Buck Showalter, he blossomed. His batting practices alone were must-watch. And, when he hit a combined 100 homers in the 2013 and 2015 seasons, there were few hitters in all of baseball who were more feared.

There was never a more appropriate moniker for the 6-foot-4 Texan than “Crush.” He could crush pitches a mile, and he could crush any hopes opponents had of keeping the Orioles at bay.

Still, his place in Orioles history felt like a surprise to Davis, who always assumed others would be inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame before he was. When team historian and alumni director Bill Stetka called him, Davis was supposed to be chaperoning his daughter’s softball game. When his wife, Jill, gave him a dirty look, he asked Stetka if he could call back.

Later that night, sitting on his couch, he heard the good news that he was going to be honored by the Orioles.

“I was super relieved. I was super excited,” he said. “There are some legendary names in this Hall of Fame, so to be a part of it is a huge honor.”

The timing of Davis’ induction, in one way, reflects how his decline contributed to the start of the Orioles’ rebuild. But the struggles of the current Orioles also cast a brighter light on those teams with Davis, Jones, Manny Machado, Nick Markakis and the rest of the gritty 2010s group. It reminds fans how rare and special a team like that is.

If Davis had his way, all his teammates would be inducted at the same time. He played on a Rangers team in 2010 that eventually reached the World Series, but before he got to Baltimore, he had never played with such a close squad.

“We had a bunch of guys that had stuff to prove,” he said. “We had a lot of guys that were from other organizations that have been released or Rule 5 or whatever it was. And we leaned into that mentality. And I think it kind of goes hand in hand with the mentality of the city of Baltimore — this is a blue-collar city. I feel that way about those groups, and I think it just helped us be successful.”

It’s hard for Davis to pick one memory from those years. There was the game in 2012 when he pitched two innings of relief against the Red Sox and somehow picked up the win. The playoff wins are high on his list, including the immortal moment in the 2014 ALDS when Delmon Young hit a go-ahead three-run double against Detroit.

A personal favorite was when Davis hit an extra-innings walkoff homer that woke up a fan snoozing in center field beneath the scoreboard. “I was like, ‘Well, you can go home now, bud.’”

But other more intimate moments stand out too, and many of them are specific to Baltimore. One year, the team determined its fantasy football draft order by racing live Maryland blue crabs in the bullpen. Pies to the face were a signature of the era, often instigated by Jones. Davis enjoyed his days off in the city eating at Abbey Burger.

“Just the ability to be ourselves in front of the fans — I think the fans really appreciated that and they really gravitated toward that,” he said. “Getting to be around this city and meet some of the people that came to our games — and I think that’s what really sticks with me the most is the people who you get to share it with.”

The ending years were considerably more difficult. Davis slumped, struggled with injuries that eventually shortened his career, and his massive seven-year, $161 million contract was a reminder of how he had not met expectations. As the rebuild began in earnest in 2019 under Mike Elias, Davis was haunted by personal and team shortcomings.

“When I retired, I was beat up physically, mentally, emotionally,” he said. “So, when I left, it was really hard, because I felt like I had let a lot of people down.”

That disappointment, Davis admitted, was why he was sparse around Camden Yards in the years that followed. He wanted to get away from where he had spent those final miserable seasons.

But now, at 40, five years removed from retirement, he’s not so hung up on how it ended.

“I felt like I needed that time to just reset and kind of regroup,” he said. “And to be honest with you, the hard parts, they helped me appreciate the good times more.”