Forget About It Is Best Advice

Right-hander Dean Chance was an Angel for the team’s first six seasons, then pitched five more seasons with the Twins, Indians, Mets and Tigers. His finest year was 1964 when, at the age of 23, he won the Cy Young Award by going 20-9 with a 1.65 earned-run average, 11 shutouts and 15 complete games. He was also a 20-game winner with Minnesota in 1967. His career record was 128-115. Chance, now a boxing promoter, is guest analyst for The Times for this World Series.

If I was still with the Angels, the first thing I would tell them is to just forget about Thursday’s game. Absolutely forget about it.

The Angel pitchers are facing a great offense and they are just not making the pitches, especially [Ben] Weber. He has got to keep the ball down and hit the corners.

Now I know [Manager Mike] Scioscia is going to get some criticism for keeping Jarrod Washburn in there for four innings, but, I gotta say, I would have stuck with him too. It was just too early to take him out. Does Scioscia have anybody better in the bullpen? No. This guy proved himself all year.

I don’t want to hear all this talk about the ball being juiced, either. That always seems to come up when a team scores a lot of runs. Look, let’s give the Giants some credit. They have some very good hitters who were making some very good guesses on which pitches were coming Thursday night. And that’s the key to good hitting.

I recall one night when Joe Adcock was playing for us with the Angels and he comes up with the bases loaded against Stu Miller, who was then pitching for the Baltimore Orioles.

Now if you remember Miller, you remember he didn’t throw very hard.

Adcock is standing at the plate and here comes strike one right down the middle and he doesn’t flinch a muscle.

Here comes strike two and he doesn’t take the bat off his shoulder.

Here comes strike three. And he still doesn’t move.

Adcock comes back to the dugout and he tells us, “Boys, I guessed wrong every time.”

Well, the Giants didn’t guess wrong much Thursday night.

So now Scioscia has to hand the ball to Kevin Appier. It would be nice if he could hand it to Sandy Koufax, somebody who could totally shut the other team down, but the Angels don’t have anybody like that. So Appier has to give them five, six good innings. And then you give the ball to [Francisco] Rodriguez and then you give the ball to [Troy] Percival. And if you get beat with those guys, you get beat.

Remember, there are 28 other teams that would like to be where the Angels are. All they have to do is win two games at home.

The Angels know the Giants. The Giants know the Angels. There are no secrets at this stage in a World Series. You are what you are.