An Angels team without September heartbreak

Many years ago, Noel Coward wrote a song that started: “Mad dogs

and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun... “ If he were writing

today, he might want to add another group: the growing ranks of

addicts who have embraced the improbable run of the Anaheim Angels to

the top of the American League West.

Last Saturday, I joined them at Edison Field. At mid-day. In the

sun, to watch another come-from-behind victory over the Texas

Rangers. I can personally verify that 40,000 Southern Californians

spent a Saturday afternoon in late summer in ideal beach weather

under a scorching sun to watch a baseball game for almost four hours.

Not only that, almost all of them stayed until the last out, thus

violating a cardinal rule of baseball watching in these parts where

leaving in the 7th inning has previously been de rigueur. Such is the

impact that this band of blue-collar Angels has had on its community.

I hesitated very long in writing this, fearful of putting a curse

on the Angels and then living in guilt for the rest of my life. But

as of today, I’m a believer. I saw them play three times last week --

often using players who spent a good portion of this season in the

minor leagues -- and come from behind each time to win.

I saw manager Mike Scioscia adhere with religious zeal to the

righty-lefty liturgy, often sitting players with much better numbers

in the process -- and getting away with it. Either he’s very lucky or

a better manager than I am. Either way, I’m ready to say it. We’re

going to the playoffs for the first time in 16 years.

I was there the last time. I was sitting 10 rows above third base

when Dave Henderson of the Boston Red Sox came to bat with the Angels

up by two runs and one out away from their first World Series. I can

still hear the crack of his bat as he propelled the ball over the

center field fence to tie the game.

The Angel dugout had been surrounded by Anaheim cops to turn away

the expected onrush of celebrants. The champagne was icing in the

Angels’ locker room. The players were standing on the dugout steps

ready to storm onto the field to share this rare moment of joy. And

then that crack of Henderson’s bat. And a funereal kind of silence

over the crowd.

Although Henderson’s home run only tied the game, and the Angels

led the series by two games, we somehow sensed that a critical moment

had been reached, a moment that had to be captured and wasn’t, and

now all was lost. And it was. The Angels blew this game in the 10th

inning, went to Boston and lost two games by wide margins -- and we

all went home to wait for 16 years to erase the memory of that

disastrous day.

Now here we are again. Almost.

But there are subtle differences this time, both in players and in

the crowds. There are no big name players signed to absurd contracts

to carry this team. No childish temperaments or swollen egos to mess

up heads in the locker room. If there is an emotional leader, it

would have to be the tiny shortstop, David Eckstein, a Red Sox

cast-off whose determination and exuberance has infected the entire

team.

And in the stands, people are actually paying attention to the

game. I measure crowd enthusiasm by the number and frequency of beach

balls being batted about in the stands; the more beach balls, the

less involving is the game. I often have this fantasy of a beach ball

landing in my lap; I jab a key into it and deflate it while hordes of

angry teenagers gather around threateningly.

I didn’t have that fantasy last week. The beach balls were silent.

And for the first time in a good many years, the word “angels” when

we were singing “Take Me Out To the Ball Game” in the 7th inning, was

not drowned out by the crowd shouting the name of some other team.

Small signs, but when you’ve waited as long as we have, they are neon

pointers to the postseason.

They are also effective sedatives for use in what I like to call

the Ultimate Therapy: helping yourself through a bad patch by

attaching importance to circumstances and events that aren’t really

very important at all in the great scheme of things. Thus the Angels

can give us some balance while we contemplate the daily headlines

about our rush to war in Iraq. I doubt if they understand that in the

Angel locker room, but no matter. Some of my pointy-headed friends

don’t understand it either, but the results are all that count.

Scioscia -- with the help of the omnipresent Rally Monkey -- has

gotten his team this far by looking neither ahead nor behind while

focusing on the game at hand. That’s not a bad policy for those of us

who have sweated out the Angels all these years. The division

championship and the World Series lie beyond the first round of

playoffs. Let’s leave them there for right now and tip one for the

Angels of 2002 who, for a change, didn’t break our hearts when it

came to playoff time.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.