Ex-Angels Air Their Old Gripes

MINNEAPOLIS —  If the Angels truly believed the nightmare would end with the conclusion of their 162nd game, they failed to consult their local television listings.

Here is where it could get ugly.

Here is where Chili Davis, valued member of the American League West champion Minnesota Twins, and Devon White, valued member of the American League East champion Toronto Blue Jays, get to take turns airing the Angels’ dirty laundry in front of CBS, ESPN and a national army of notepads.

One day, Davis is railing against the Angels and Doug Rader for “mishandling” White, calling his former teammate a “once-in-a-lifetime player” whom the organization failed to nurture and appreciate.

The next, White doubles, singles and scores three runs for Toronto in a 5-2 playoff victory--and then is given his turn at the punching bag.

Mishandle?

“It wasn’t just me,” White said, jumping all over Davis’ baton pass. “They mishandled a lot of people. Chili. Dante Bichette. Johnny Ray. A lot of guys. Doug Rader didn’t see eye to eye with them and he ran them out of there.”

Personally, White said Rader mishandled his entire 1990 season, White’s last Angel season, from start to finish.

Start. According to White, Rader’s preseason plan to bat White leadoff--a widely acclaimed disaster--was scuttled by Rader’s impatience. “One day, I’d be leading off, then, I’d be batting third. Then I’d be batting seventh,” White said. “I was all over the lineup. That’s why me batting leadoff didn’t work.”

Finish. “My biggest complaint with Rader was that at the end of last season, with four games left, I went into his office to ask why I wasn’t playing,” White said. “I asked him, ‘Do you have a problem with me?” and he said, ‘No, why do you ask?’

“I said, ‘Then why haven’t you spoken to me in weeks?’ All he said was, ‘I’ve had a lot on my mind.’

“Well, we played the last four games and I never got off the bench and he never said another word to me. Respect is due a dog--and Doug didn’t even give me that. All he had to do was explain it to me--’Hey, Devon, we just want to try Max (Venable) or Luis (Polonia) in center the rest of the way.’ But he wouldn’t even do that.”

In between, however--that was the killing blow in White’s mind. In between, the Angels demoted White to triple-A Edmonton once his average began to scrape away at .200.

“I knew I was out of there once they sent me down,” White said. “A lot of other players struggled and they weren’t sent to Edmonton. It was their way of trying to embarrass me.

“That was the last straw. I knew then it was time to get out. If I’d stayed and gone back to spring training, I couldn’t have faced my teammates with that attitude, knowing that they didn’t appreciate me.”

White blames Rader for the demotion.

“He’s the one who picks and chooses,” White said. “Before they sent me down, he was talking about trying Dante in center field. Then something must have happened with him and Dante, because by the time I came back, Luis was in center field.”

Care to guess what White thinks of the Angels’ decision to fire Rader?

“I was very happy that day,” he said. “They should have fired him earlier.”

White beat Rader out of town by nine months, requesting a trade after the 1990 season--”I told them I’d go anywhere”--and having his request granted on Dec. 2, 1990, when the Angels dealt White to Toronto, plus reliever Willie Fraser, plus prime pitching prospect Marcus Moore for Luis Sojo, a second baseman who couldn’t hit, and Junior Felix, a center fielder who couldn’t miss the disabled list.

“I was a happy camper,” White reminisced.

White batted .217 and struck out 116 times in his last Angel season, but with the redwoods in Toronto’s batting order, White could afford to get lost in the forest. At first, the ninth spot in the lineup seemed like the place to be for White.

Blue Jay Manager Cito Gaston, stunning the baseball world, chose to bat White leadoff. Seven months later, White is batting .282 with 17 home runs, 60 runs batted in, 33 stolen bases--and Toronto is tied, 1-1, in the AL playoffs.

Gaston’s secret?

“We didn’t ask Devon to hit like a leadoff hitter,” Gaston said. “We didn’t tell him to hit the other way or hit down on the ball. We just let him be himself.

“I think the Angels confused him. They wanted him to bat leadoff, they wanted him to hit 20 home runs and drive in 80 runs a season. Devon had spent his entire career batting second or third. He wasn’t prepare to hit like a leadoff hitter.”

Gaston to White: Full speed ahead . . . and damn the strikeouts. White had 135 of them in the Blue Jays’ leadoff spot this season. “I have no problem with that,” Gaston said.

Revisionist history has been making the rounds in Toronto, with White in charge of rewrite. To wit: White loves batting leadoff and always did, even in Anaheim. “I never told (the Angels) I didn’t like it,” White insists.

The truth: White told the Angels he didn’t like it. When Cookie Rojas first broached the idea in 1988, White all but spat on it.

Let the record stand: White hated the idea of batting leadoff in Anaheim.

“If anything,” White allows, “I probably told them I preferred hitting second or third.”

That’s what winning will do for you.

First the memory goes, then the taste buds.

The Angels had their reasons to do what they did with White. If anything, they waited too long to trade him. But at the moment, White has the floor and as long as he keeps hitting, running and scoring, the Angels are going to have to grimace and bear it.

“Chili and I have done a lot of talking about what’s happened to us and the Angels this year,” White said, never too proud to gloat. “It’s like Chili said the other day--this has been an ‘in-your-face’ year for us. That’s a good way to put it.”