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Willie Davis remembered

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Growing up in Orange County, I was often asked why I favored the Dodgers more than the Angels, and I sometimes explained in part by using this story involving Willie Davis:

I had an aunt who lived in Garden Grove and was a huge Angels fan, and she was always pestering my father and me to go see her favorite team. Finally, we did.

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The Angels were playing the Washington Senators, as bad of a team as there was in baseball. The Angels weren’t very good either, but they liked to brag about their ‘star’ shortstop, Jim Fregosi.

I was in grade school, so the memory has faded a little, but it seems as if it was late in the game when Fregosi hit a pop-up high over the infield. About three of the Senators, being the Senators, gingerly approached a spot between the third-base line and the pitcher’s mound where they gauged it would land. And it did ... land -- between the three of them.

But Fregosi, half walking, half jogging down the line, was nearly thrown out at first base anyway.

Stunned at his lack of hustle, I turned to my father for his opinion.

He didn’t say much, just sadly wagging his head and offering: ‘Willie Davis would have been standing at third.’

Heck yeah, he would have.

Davis could be a circus in the outfield -- even I remember his errors in that 1966 World Series game, and I was only 6 -- but he was among the most exciting players in baseball. If anything, he hustled a little too much, tried a little too hard.

To me, though, he’ll always embody one reason that in my childhood I favored the L.A. team over the hometown Angels: Visions of one of my favorite players sliding into third, beating out a bunt or diving around the outfield.

-- Mike Hiserman

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