Matt’s Musings:

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim were on the road Saturday night, but the Edison High baseball team had a couple of angels smiling on them at Angel Stadium.

They’ve been with the Chargers all season, on their magical ride to the Sunset League championship and the CIF Southern Section Division I title game.

Nick Mazzone IV, an Edison junior who played on the junior varsity baseball team last year, passed away Feb. 3 of complications from the flu. Freshman team member Richard “R.J.” Gonzales drowned March 22, after suffering a heart attack while swimming.

The deaths hit Coach Steve Lambright hard. The fact that they weren’t varsity players didn’t matter; they were members of the Edison baseball program. It’s always a family atmosphere for Lambright, whose son, Nolan, is a batboy.

Banners were put up in remembrance of the players at the Chargers’ field, and patches (No. 1 for Gonzales and No. 5 for Mazzone) were sewn on jerseys. And the fact that Edison dealt with the adversity so well is what makes Lambright so proud, maybe even more than any win accomplished on the diamond.

“I didn’t want it to be a built-in excuse,” Lambright said. “I didn’t want it to be a reason why we didn’t do well. But baseball has been a sort of therapy for us.”

Nick Mazzone was formerly a standout pitcher for Huntington Valley Little League. Mazzone’s dad, also named Nick, coached his elder son on the 2004 HVLL Majors squad that won the District 62 tournament and advanced all the way to the Section 5 title game. Edison senior second baseman Ryan Little was also a member of that team.

Huge Pittsburgh Steelers fans, Nick took Nick IV and younger son Justin to Super Bowl XLIII this year to see Pittsburgh beat Arizona. Nick IV would die two days later, an unthinkable turn of events.

Adding to the sorrows, Gonzales suddenly passed away right after Edison opened Sunset League play. His mom, Sandra Garcia, described him as maybe 4-foot-10, 77 pounds “on his best day.”

“You saw him out there and he looked like nothing, but he tried,” Garcia said. “He was very motivated. The team loved him for that.”

The Chargers didn’t do a lot of talking about Mazzone and Gonzales, at least not as a group. But the kids don’t forget.

“We’ve got the most motivation in the world,” sophomore pitcher Henry Owens said after his complete-game victory over Mater Dei in the Division I semifinals. “We’ve got two guys on our right sleeve.”

Lambright has had youth baseball cards of Mazzone and Gonzales in his wallet. He’ll take them out during the Chargers’ games.

“They’re with me,” he said. “It’s superstitious, it’s stupid, I don’t know. Just having the cards out, it helps.”

On Saturday night, senior pitcher Kurt Heyer and the Chargers nearly won the title at Angel Stadium, suffering a 1-0 loss to Capistrano Valley. Less than two months earlier at the same site, Angels rookie Nick Adenhart threw six scoreless innings against Oakland. Adenhart was dead later that same night after a car crash in Fullerton with a suspected drunk driver.

Heyer said the Chargers went out to the center-field wall at Angel Stadium after their tough loss, to touch the picture of Adenhart that the Angels have put up as a memorial.

“It’s been our main motivation this season,” Heyer said. “We never expected this to happen. I don’t think any other team has felt what we’ve felt. That’s why we all went to the outfield fence. We wanted to have a little bit of a connection ... We wanted to reflect on everything that had happened that pushed us to where we are today.”

These are incidents that remind us just where sports fall on life’s big pecking order. Yet, for seven innings on a cool night in early June, Edison’s classic game against Capo Valley was an experience that everyone in attendance could share.

Including two kids who didn’t even have to buy a ticket.

MATT SZABO may be reached at (714) 966-4614 or at matthew.szabo@latimes.com.