The Bell Curve:Angels beat Yankees; condiments a problem

Thoughts in Anaheim Stadium Monday evening while waiting for the game between the Angels and the rich, arrogant, overpriced, smug, self-satisfied, hateful New York Yankees — the USC of professional baseball — to start.

While I balance my hot dog and beer through “Oh say can you see,” belted by a young woman with a powerful voice, I count the signs that this is not just an ordinary night at our friendly neighborhood ballpark.

For starters, the parking lot is cluttered with an uncommon number of huge TV equipment trucks signifying an event is about to happen.

Normally, it is into the third inning before the sold-out seats begin to fill, but not on this night.

Surrounding my View Section seat when I arrive in time for the national anthem is a sea of black sweatshirts displaying Yankee logos.

It pleases me to think the people wearing them are mostly Garden Grove natives who once passed through Kennedy Airport and have fantasized this tenuous connection with New York into association by osmosis with the elitist Yankees.

That they take it seriously is demonstrated many beers later this evening when a fight breaks out behind me between a clump of Yankee sweatshirts and a bevy of Angel caps outraged at this violation of their turf.

The game does not start auspiciously.

The fifth pitcher in the Angel starting rotation, Dustin Moseley, there solely because of the disappearance of Bartolo Colon, is hammered for six blistering line drives in the first inning, three of them mercifully caught at the price of only one run.

After that, Moseley performs well, giving up only one more run while the Angels generate three — and would have had more had Chone Figgins not attempted unsuccessfully to steal a base with the meat of the batting order coming up.

And if point man in the meat department, Vladimir Guerrero, had not dribbled repeated ground outs with men on base.

Wrapped around these early inning missed opportunities is some spectacular fielding that frames the sense of post-season urgency that always accompanies a visit from the Yankees but seems more so on this night.

The crowd actually watches the game, including young women within view who are so bewitched by Yankees Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez they put down their cell phones even between innings.

As the lead passes back and forth, the intensity grows.

The Angels are victimized by two blatantly bad umpiring calls, especially one at first base that costs them a run and that I’m convinced I could call better from a half-block away than the umpire allegedly on top of the play.

A later terrible decision on a checked swing gets Angel Manager Mike Scioscia out of the dugout for a prolonged argument with an umpire.

Two significant events that both occur late in the game don’t take place on the field. First comes the singing of “Take Me Out To the Ball Game” during the seventh inning stretch.

The size and lung power of enemy spectators can be judged rather accurately by whether or not they can drown out “Angels” with the name of the visiting team at an appropriate line in the song.

On this night, the Yankees are clearly out in force.

The other event is the emergence of the Rally Monkey.

He (or is it she?) hasn’t been very much in evidence at the games I’ve seen earlier this year.

Now, he appears with the Angels trailing by a run and works his magic immediately.

As the Angels regain the lead, it occurs to me the proximity of the Rally Monkey to Mickey Mouse might hopefully grate on whatever sensibilities the New York players possess, and I find that warming.

After the monkey flexes his rally muscles, the outcome is clear. Only the time and means remain in question.

They are resolved in the 10th inning when a 28-year-old Angel rookie — just called up from the deep minors — drives in his first major league run. The good guys win one, and the black sweatshirts go back to their covens to take on the Rally Monkey and the forces of goodness another day.

As we make our way through the parking lot after the game, two unrelated thoughts join the joy of victory.

The first is a question that puzzles me at every game.

In a society capable of sending a man to the moon and including an industry that probably sells a billion hot dogs every baseball season, why has it not been possible to devise a gadget that will dispense chopped onions and pickle relish on hot dogs without either jamming or spewing the condiments?

The second is an economic dilemma. My ticket partner told me this morning that as season ticket holders, we must come up with large sums of money by Sept. 1 to guarantee post-season tickets through the World Series.

This means if the Angels don’t make the play-offs or get beat before the World Series, then we have to sweat out the return of our money on unused tickets.

Meanwhile, the Angels have the use of it — and they seem to be demanding it earlier every year.

All this is happily complicated by having just seen the Angels beat the Yankees and send a message they intend to be a post-season player — a message that was repeated with thunder and lightning and 18 runs the following night.

So I’ll deal with the chopped onions and — I’m thinking right now in the glow of victory — the economic deadline if the Angels continue to stick it to all those black sweatshirts.