Trouble in Disneyland

For its next animated feature, Disney need only look to its baseball team, where trees are singing and carpets are flying and all sorts of fascinating creatures are tumbling across the screen.

Terry Collins is the fierce mouse. Mo Vaughn is the slumbering lion. Chuck Finley is the wisecracking giraffe.

Along with a chortling menagerie, they frolic and fuss and fall into last place.

Then out of a bush rumbles an angry wart hog, and everything stops.

His name is Darin Erstad, and his painfully honest diatribe in Thursday’s Times essentially marked the end of a troubled season.

“The end of the season? Are you crazy?” Collins said Thursday from Arlington, Texas. “C’mon, we’ve got time. I’m never giving up until we have to give up.”

That is why Collins is not one of the Angels who should be replaced.

But if you believe Erstad--and considering nobody works harder for the money, you should--then there may be too many other changes necessary to save this summer.

Changes in personnel. Changes in personality. Changes in perception.

It was a September interview given in July. It was a stunning interview given by a guy who usually only stirs it up on the basepaths.

Everyone who has watched the Angels the past couple of seasons--heck, the past couple of days--knows something is wrong.

On Wednesday, Erstad dramatically confirmed it.

The high, er, low points:

* “We have a soft team.”

* “No question, winning is not the first priority here.”

* “There seems to be a group of guys here that doesn’t know what it takes to win.”

Collins was read the comments over the telephone. You could feel him glow.

“What he’s saying has to be addressed,” Collins said. “What we have to look at is what kind of player you need here to win.”

Bill Bavasi, the Angel general manager, was as blunt as Erstad.

“I don’t have any problem with what he said, or how he said it,” Bavasi said. “I’m not saying how I feel, because if I do feel that way, I would tell the players. But Darin has a right to speak like anyone else.”

The first notable thing about those comments is who did not say them.

Shouldn’t this have been Mo Vaughn’s job? Isn’t saying things like this part of the reason the Angels are paying him $80 million?

This, then, is also the first necessary change.

Few will say it, but many believe it.

Vaughn needs to become more of a leader.

It has been understandably hard for him this year, seeing as he joined a new team, then spent the first part of the year on its bench because of a sprained ankle.

But he didn’t need to be in the middle of the Terry Collins mutiny, even if he was only standing up for some buddies.

Erstad’s comments were not directed toward Vaughn, who has an equally strong work ethic.

But Vaughn didn’t need to respond to Erstad’s comments Thursday by subtly pointing more fingers at his bosses.

“Like I’ve always said, the whole thing starts at the top and comes down,” he said in a clubhouse interview with The Times’ Mike DiGiovanna. “Until that situation is straightened out, it’s going to be like this. . . . That’s all I can say to you . . . stuff rolls downhill.”

Vaughn would not say whether he was talking about Bavasi or Collins.

For this team to come together, he probably shouldn’t talk about either.

Said Bavasi: “Is Mo the leader he is going to be? No. But it’s hard to be a leader in your first year. I think he will do more later in the year and really take up that role next year.”

Those who witnessed Kirk Gibson throw a fit over a shoe polish prank in spring training before he ever played a game with the Dodgers in 1988 would beg to differ. From the moment they show up, leaders can be leaders.

Vaughn said he feels he was set up as the bad guy in the Collins mutiny, and that also has made him reluctant to become more of a leader.

“Management called us, they asked us for something,” he said. “They turned it around when it came down. That’s unacceptable. I kind of got mad, to tell you the truth.”

Whether Vaughn was summoned to talk about Collins, or summoned to respond to reports that he was unhappy with Collins, none of that matters now.

Collins is not going anywhere. Vaughn is not going anywhere. They should take their differences and roll them downhill.

The second notable thing about Erstad’s comments is that they should influence the Angels to finally admit, although they have the talent to win, they don’t have the type of players to win.

Erstad, while struggling this year, is the type of player who would know this.

“If you had nine players like him, my job would be a piece of cake,” Collins said.

For the Angels to acquire at least two or three more of those players, they need to act now, before the July 31 trading deadline, when pennant-contending teams will give up good young talent for the likes of Chuck Finley, Garret Anderson or Ken Hill.

“For the past couple of weeks, in talking with other teams, we’ve gone down two tracks--trading to help the club right now, or in the future,” Bavasi said. “We have to decide which track to take.”

That newly derailed train should give him a clue.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.