Nobody’s Perfect, but They Make Do

You should see Darin Erstad four hours before game time, braces and protective sleeves scattered around his locker, all waiting for their moment of application.

Early April has become late September, and Erstad carries it in his joints and on his expression, a road-weary grin of surrender to the passage of another 600 at-bats.

He stands for the Angels, these Angels, imperfect as they are, lacking anything like 25-man precision. He stands, also, with some effort.

They’re not exactly the club we all expected. They too expected more runs. They expected the usual out of Garret Anderson and Steve Finley, and a season of growth from Dallas McPherson. They expected their relief pitchers to be the best in the league again, but they’re just so-so, and sometimes worse, dangerous when the leads they are asked to protect typically aren’t that big anymore.

But, when Erstad led them out of the dugout around dinnertime, they were up two games on the Oakland Athletics, and from Oakland, Billy Beane was saying, “We just need to make the Angels’ series relevant,” meaning the four games starting Monday.

They wait around for Vladimir Guerrero’s at-bats a lot, Anderson is ailing again, Finley’s pretty much been forgotten, and they keep handing the baseball to Scot Shields. They never did go get that slugger, or the late-inning left-hander to run at Eric Chavez or Jason Giambi or, ahem, David Ortiz.

None of which bothers Erstad. There’s a lot of imperfection out there. There probably will be only one 100-game winner -- the St. Louis Cardinals. In the previous four years, there were 10, and never fewer than two in a season.

“I’m a firm believer,” he said, “get your foot in the door, doesn’t matter how it happens, and the team that gets hot wins. You just put yourself in a position at the end of the year to put your foot in the door. Take Boston. They were very good last year. But they got hot.”

The New York Yankees arrived in first place Wednesday night, after 151 games and at least that many crises, and the Red Sox are a game behind the Cleveland Indians for the wild card. The Chicago White Sox have played themselves into a place only Chicagoans could know, somewhere between first place and certain doom.

One American League scout called the Indians “the best team in the American League,” and he’d get few arguments. Now they have to make the playoffs.

As the Yankees and Red Sox try to hit their way into October, and the A’s, Angels and White Sox hope to pitch their way in, “only the Indians are not one dimensional,” the scout said, before including the Cardinals in the National League.

“A lot of teams,” he said, “lean on one side of their game. There aren’t a lot of real complete teams. The flaws you’re seeing are for real.”

It’s not just the Angels. It’s almost everybody.

“Sounds to me like competitive balance,” Angel catcher Josh Paul said.

Told that Bud Selig wins again, Paul winced.

“There is no juggernaut,” he said. “It makes the American League fun. There’s six cities with all their fingers crossed, all their rabbits’ feet up. Maybe the talent is more spread out this year. Look at the Yankees. They were supposed to win 145 games with that payroll. It didn’t turn out to be the case. Obviously they’re not out of it, but they didn’t win 145 games this year either.”

The Angels live with their defects, just as the White Sox live without a closer Ozzie Guillen can trust, and the Red Sox live without an ace, and the A’s without offensive consistency, and the Yankees without a believable starting rotation.

“Everyone has their flaws,” Beane said. “It’s probably the most wide open it’s been in years.”

None of it will be solved over the next week and a half, and at least three of them will be in the playoffs after that. Near the end, and on a night the Angels threw three hits at the Texas Rangers through six innings, then five in the seventh, they won in their own special way. Anderson sat out, a rookie batted cleanup and Erstad hit behind him. But, Buck Showalter managed so hard to prevent one run in the seventh, he ended up allowing four, with the help of three pitching changes, none of which worked.

Leading the division yet convincing few they won’t have to play to the last inning next Sunday for it, Erstad said he’s never felt vulnerable. Never. So, Shields pitches for the 73rd time, and leaves the game where he found it. Orlando Cabrera and Jose Molina get the big hits. Finley doubles in the eighth. And the Angels do just enough again.

“When it comes down to it, we have a lot of confidence in the team,” Erstad said. “We don’t care what’s happened in the past. For example, Steve Finley, I’d take him with the bases loaded in a tight game any time. The type of players we have, the competitors we have, those are the things that feel right.”