How a monkey made my dream come true

If there is anyone left within the reach of this newspaper who

doesn’t believe in the power of the Rally Monkey, I would urge that

he or she watch a video of the seventh and eighth innings at Edison

Field on the night of Oct. 26.

The score with one out in the seventh was 5-0 in favor of the

Giants, there was no one on base, the Giant pitcher had given up just

two hits, and his team was eight outs away from victory in the World

Series.

My wife and I were there, Section 226, seats 18 and 19, courtesy

of the generosity of her father who bought a pair of tickets through

the post-season and then passed them out among his family. Had she

been able to hear me above the cacophony of 40,000 thunder sticks, I

was going to say to her at the beginning of the seventh inning that

the Angels had a great season, they gave us a terrific ride and we

should honor them for coming so close. In other words, for a brief

moment, I no longer believed in the Rally Monkey.

Then the hits started to fall in, along with some strokes of what

appeared to be luck. But I know now it was the doing of the Monkey.

A dinky fly ball hit down the right field line dropped two rows

into the stands for a three-run homer. A pop fly that Barry Bonds

couldn’t get to dropped in for a double when the Giants left fielder

kicked it around. Then Troy Glaus hit a real double off the wall in

center field, and the Angels were ahead 6-5. They would never again

be behind in the 2002 World Series.

And after all those agonizing years of disappointment, we almost

missed it.

Last July, we made a date for an October weekend with dear friends

in Portland, Ore. that included a visit to the Shakespeare Festival

in Ashland. Even someone as blindly committed as I am to the Angels

could hardly have anticipated that these plans would conflict with a

World Series in Anaheim. So we went knowing that even getting to a TV

set for the first three games might be impossible. But generous hosts

and luck in scheduling a matinee production of “Julius Caesar” on

Sunday eased our pain considerably. We missed only the first game.

We were invited to a dinner party in Ashland on Sunday, and our

hosts -- far beyond the call of duty or even congeniality -- indulged

these strange visitors form Lotus Land by turning on the TV and

muting the sound during an extended cocktail hour. So we saw that

remarkable 11-10 game in which the Giants suffered the same fate we

had just witnessed befall the Roman senators who murdered Caesar.

On Tuesday, back in Portland, our friends simply accepted the

inevitable and served dinner in front of the TV set. To our comfort

and their great credit, they showed more than token enthusiasm over

the outcome of the game. When I asked if they would watch succeeding

games after we went home, they insisted stoutly that they would.

At home, we had a crisis of conscience. The Angels had to lose one

of the next two games or there would be no sixth game for us to

attend. When they lost both of them, I carried an extreme burden of

guilt for harboring that thought. And so we went to Edison Field on

Saturday night with some trepidation -- and the Angels assuaged my

guilt and renewed my faith in the Monkey with that incredible 6-5

win.

The final game was almost anti-climatic. I knew the Monkey was in

charge. I was as cool as that 20-year-old pitcher the Angels found in

Salt Lake City the last month of the season who kept striking out old

pros. The Monkey didn’t even have to show himself in the clincher.

It’s disorienting when the impossible happens. Winning the lottery

must produce the same feeling. You shake your head and turn to

ordinary matters to get re-focused. And thoughts come. What kept

occurring to me is the youth of this team. A powerful nucleus of the

Angels is so very young--in their low to mid 20s. This says a lot of

the credit should go to the scouts who found and signed these young

men and the minor league staffs who trained them. And it conjured up

thoughts of a dynasty.

And then there were the recollections of Gene Autry. I was

privileged to have gotten to know him a little in the process of

doing several profiles on him for the Los Angeles Times. He was as

down home, as unpretentious and as proud of his team as the players

who finally realized his dream. Not a Barry Bonds among them -- but a

lot of Darin Erstads. A lot of North Dakota.

And finally there was the statement I had made so many times in

the years of disappointment and despair that I was determined not to

depart this life before the Angels won a World Series.

Such a pronouncement from a young person would be frivolous, but

not from someone my age. Given the Angels’ track record, it seemed to

me like a claim to immortality. But just to cover myself, I threw in

completion of the novel I’ve been working on since the ninth grade.

Now I’m concerned. The Angels crossed me up and won, and I’ve

actually been working on my novel at a dangerous pace. So it’s clear

I need another set of goals so impossible that my longevity would no

longer be threatened. I’m working on such a list now.

Meanwhile, my grateful thanks to the Rally Monkey and the Anaheim

Angels. As with so many other men of my generation, baseball is a

connective that helps hold the pieces of a life together. For the

past week, I’ve had a good many phone calls and e-mails from friends

and family who have long shared my joy and despair with the Angels.

One call came from Denmark, from the husband of a foreign student who

lived in our home for a year more than three decades ago.

For this Depression youth, baseball was a vacant lot game that

didn’t require great skill and offered a host of heroes at the

professional level. And since then, through war and peace and social

change, it has provided a reference point of stability in which the

bases were always the same distance apart wherever they were put down

and the game was never over until the last man was out. Those rules

haven’t changed. In baseball and -- for many of us -- in life as

well.

I have a brick -- a gift from my daughters -- near the main gate

at Edison Field with my name on it. It was moved a few years ago, and

I haven’t yet found its new space, but I may use the off-season to

track it down.

My brick says “Ever Hopeful,” and I see no reason to change that.

As I was trying to say to my wife at Edison Field last Saturday, the

Angels gave us a tremendous year, certainly the most entertaining and

unselfish and ultimately exciting baseball team I’ve ever known.

And they up and won, too.

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