ANAHEIM, Calif. -- At 102, Faith Henderson thought she had seen everything. That was until the Angels played the Minnesota Twins in the AL championship series.

"To think I really got to come to a game at my age, I'd never believe it,'' she said Friday. "To think I get to see the Angels play (in the playoffs) I'd never believe it.''

Dubbed the Angels' oldest fan, Henderson has been coming to games since the team's first season in 1961, when it was known as the Los Angeles Angels.

She has followed the team through its many incarnations, watching as it moved to Orange County and became the California Angels in 1966, then morphed into the Anaheim Angels when The Walt Disney Co. took over from founding owner Gene Autry four years ago.

It was her husband who spurred her interest.

"My husband was a sports fan. If I hadn't watched baseball, I'd have been a sports widow,'' said Henderson, a retired librarian who was born in Mendocino on Aug. 4, 1900, and has lived in Southern California since the 1920s.

But what began out of necessity grew into a love for the team, and she continued to attend Angels games after her husband, Pat, died in 1977.

"After he died, I had to be on my own,'' she said. "I still drove over here to the games by myself. I sat by myself.''

She finally became a season ticket holder in the 1980s, with seats behind home plate, so she could bring along friends. She kept her season tickets until age 93, two years after she moved into the Morningside retirement community in Fullerton.

Until Friday, her last game was in 1999, on her 99th birthday.

She returned for the playoffs after officials discovered she was the team's oldest known fan, and Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly presented her with a team jersey with her name and the number ''02'' on the back.

When advancing age made it too difficult to attend games after 1999, Henderson watched them on television or listened on the radio at Morningside, where she lives in an apartment by herself. She gets around with the aid of a walker she has decorated with an Angels pennant.

"She needs no help really at all,'' said Amy Peterson, an assistant administrator at Morningside who escorted Henderson to the game.

Sitting in the mayor's box at Edison Field before Friday night's game, Henderson reflected on various baseball memories. She recalls listening to the radio in 1927 when Babe Ruth hit a home run and of paying close attention to Joe DiMaggio's romance with Marilyn Monroe in the 1950s.

She also witnessed the Angels' last playoff appearance, the heartbreaking 1986 ALCS, when the team was one strike away from going to the World Series, only to have the Boston Red Sox rally and win three straight games.

Her all-time favorite player is Angels outfielder Tim Salmon, and her most prized possession the baseball the team autographed and gave her in 1990.

On Friday, she got to see Salmon play again and, equipped with her noisemaking thunderstick, to cheer him on.

"I can't believe all this excitement,'' she said happily.