ANAHEIM -- Tim Mead, who has worked with the Angels for 40 years, including the last 22 as the club's vice president of communications, is set to leave the organization to become the president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, the Angels and the Hall of Fame announced Tuesday.

Mead will step down from his role as the Angels’ public relations director before the beginning of the summer, he said during a news conference in the Angels’ home dugout on Tuesday. He was approached by the Hall of Fame and its outgoing president, Jeff Idelson, during Spring Training to get a feel for his interest level, and Mead decided earlier this month that it was too good of an opportunity to pass up, even though he thought he’d never leave the Angels’ organization.

"When that day came, it would be I’d be retired and done,” Mead said. “The Angels will always be part of my business. That’s just the way I’ll always think. When you get to do something you love and you get to go out on your own terms for a situation that you couldn’t even have prayed for or thought of ... to be around those people and that community, I fell in love with the game all over again."

Mead, 61, began his career with the club in 1980 as an intern in the Angels' public relations department. He was appointed director of media relations in '85, and was promoted to assistant vice president of media relations in '91 before serving as the club's assistant general manager from 1994-97. He became the club's vice president of communications in 1998 and held that title for more than 20 years.

Mead is one of the longest-tenured Angels employees in the franchise’s history, but he shrugged off any talk about his legacy with the club.

“I think legacies are what other people determine for you,” Mead said. “I just think that I was an employee who was blessed and privileged to be part of his favorite team, and that’s it. I grew up rooting for the Angels and to work here for 40 years, I thought I’d make it to 50, but at least there won’t be another team underneath it.”

Mead said his favorite memories included the club’s World Series championship in 2002, Jim Abbott’s Major League debut in 1989, Wally Joyner’s rookie season in ’86 and being a part of milestones in recent years for Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Shohei Ohtani. Trout and Pujols were among a large of group of current and former players who wished congratulations to Mead on Tuesday.

Mead will become the seventh president in the history of the Hall of Fame. Jane Forbes Clark serves as the chairman of the board of directors, and Mead said a lunch meeting with Clark in mid-April played a major role in convincing him to take on the role.

"It's a privilege and an honor," Mead said. “I look forward to the first night to go in and see the monuments and look around and understand what it means. It’s the greatest performers, the greatest moments. To let that settle in and absorb it, I don’t know that I can fully appreciate it. But I’m going to try real hard.”