THE BELL CURVE:

A week ago Wednesday, I went to a ball game at Anaheim stadium. The weather was deceptive. Started out warm, turned cold. I was hoping the Angels would work up a big lead so I could pull a Dodger and go home early and warm up. But that wasn’t to be.

The game was low-scoring and close, which was something of a surprise since both teams were using rookie pitchers new to the rotation. By the end of the sixth inning, the Angels managed to squeeze out a fragile 3-0 lead.

It didn’t come easily. The Angel pitcher in a previous visit to the varsity last summer had been beat up badly and sent back to the minors.

He had earned this start last week because of a good showing in spring training and the absence of three Angel starting pitchers who were struggling with injuries.

And from the first batter on the night I was watching, the rookie was in trouble, getting behind repeatedly on pitch counts and giving up hits and walks generously. But not runs.

Twice he pitched out of bases-loaded situations, once with only one out. Repeatedly he had to work from 3-2 counts, thus building up the number of pitches until they almost reached the early season plateau of 100.

And so at the end of six innings, he came out, having lighted the path to his first major league victory in front of his father, who had flown out from the East Coast to be present at this event.

What we shared with the young pitcher’s father was an exhibition of his son’s dogged determination and refusal either to give ground or depart from his strengths, qualities rare in a rookie.

In the resume for regular work he spelled out on the diamond this night was the implicit message that here, at age 22, was the makings of a solid major league pitcher.

His walk off the field and the meeting with his father afterward rocked with the exhilaration that celebrates reaching a goal that offers great promise, sought and won after years of desire and effort.

And three hours after he walked off that field to the standing ovation of all of us who shared his joy and that promise vicariously, Nick Adenhart was dead.

I’m still shaking my head to try and rid myself of the realization that one lunatic reportedly full of booze and God knows what else at the wheel of an automobile can, in one mindless moment, destroy lives wholesale.

Nick, Courtney Francis Stewart and Henry Pearson were killed and their friend, Jon Wilhite, critically injured when the driver of a speeding car allegedly ignored a red light and became a lethal bullet scoring a direct hit that snuffed out the lives of three and maybe four of the young people riding in the car that was hit.

I remember leaving the game that night angry at the Angel bullpen for sullying Nick’s victory by turning the game over to Oakland with a terrible relief job — a recollection that offers some perspective on what is really important in this life.

And an awareness, too, of the suddenness with which tragic events can happen that tell us to make the very best we can out of the day and the moment at hand. That’s a potent legacy Nick Adenhart left behind for each of us.

I’m still a little perplexed as to why the Pilot turned over its Forum page a few weeks ago to Larry Agran, mayor pro tem of the city of Irvine, to enlighten us with a new piece of fiction about the mystic Great Park.

Agran buffered that enlightening process with a string of numbers that columnist Jim Righeimer properly exposed in the Pilot as deliberately confusing and misleading rather than lying — a concession I find charitable.

I admired especially the exactness of Agran’s predictions, which gave them a patina of respectability. Thus the Great Park, says Agran, would create 31, 532 jobs (not 534 or 519) in what he called “the near term.”

That this work is “shovel ready” is probably the most accurate statement in his Forum piece.

Problem is, it’s not dirt that is being shoveled.

This is the guy who, back when Irvine was spending many millions of dollars to torpedo a commercial airport in El Toro — mandated by two elections — faked a photograph of a massive airliner hovering dangerously low over an Irvine residential area.

Such scare tactics were minor-league stuff for Agran. He was just warming up for the varsity fake show we came to know and love as the Great Park.

Agran ended his pitch in the Pilot with the hope that some federal stimulus money might be attracted to the Great Park.

That seems unlikely if the balloon ride remains the only tangible sign of development. But with Agran as a role model, we’d better remain shovel-ready just in case.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.