Baseball / Ross Newhan : Wally World: Orange County’s Latest Amusement Attraction

Patti Knight, a second-grade teacher at Glenview Elementary School in Anaheim, was telling the women in the teachers’ lounge how she couldn’t believe what Wally Joyner was accomplishing, and that she would definitely be attending more Angel games than usual and that she just wished Joyner didn’t make her feel so old. Knight is in her late 20s.

Besides his 15 home runs, 37 runs batted in and .312 batting average, Joyner seems to have given the Angels some home-grown, homespun identity for the first time.

He’s the talk of the town in a way that Bo Belinsky and Dean Chance and Jim Fregosi and Nolan Ryan and even Rod Carew and Reggie Jackson never were.

Realtor Harmon Yarber, for instance, was distributing business cards in an East Anaheim neighborhood when he paused and said: “I haven’t been this excited about a young player since Stan Musial came up.”

The media impact worried barber Mickey Port as he fussed over a customer at his Yorba Linda shop.

“I wish they could just leave the kid alone,” he said. “But I guess that’s part of it.”

It’s all part of this new thing known as Wally World, but that’s not to say everyone thinks it’s wonderful.

There’s Jim Russo, who was also talking about Joyner, but in a different light.

Russo scouts for the Baltimore Orioles. He has long been considered one of baseball’s top talent appraisers. He was in Anaheim for last week’s series with Boston, preparing a report for Manager Earl Weaver, whose Orioles will play host to the Angels Monday night in the opener of a three-game series.

“Joyner scares the hell out of me,” Russo said when the Boston series ended. “He’s something special. He’s one of the best I’ve seen come up in a long time.” Russo said that containing Joyner presented a challenge and that he hadn’t decided yet what to tell Weaver.

“The first thing you say to yourself is, ‘Pitch him away,’ ” Russo said. “But I’ll be darned if you can do that because he can hit it out to left, too. High change-up? No. High fastball? No. A breaking ball away? No.

“He’s handled everything. I guess when we get to Joyner it’ll be like that TV commercial for the phone company where the kid gets the bad grade but doesn’t want to admit it. ‘Earl, I can’t hear you. What did you say, Earl?’ ”

Add Russo: The Baltimore scout said he expects Joyner to strike out less than either Jose Canseco of the Oakland A’s or Pete Incaviglia of the Texas Rangers. He added, however, that he has been impressed by all of the baby boomers.

“The National League better not run us down anymore,” Russo said. “There was a time they could get away with it, but not now. We’ve got some darn good-looking players.”

The rekindled romance between the Cleveland Indians and their victory-starved fans was doused again by the Texas Rangers’ 22 hits in a 19-2 wipeout Monday night.

The crowd of 9,354 mocked every good play the Indians made after Texas scored eight runs in the sixth. A bottle was thrown at pitcher Jim Kern as he left the field, and the Indians had to dodge oranges thrown from the stands. One fan even fired back a foul ball he had just retrieved.

“I thought we had a new beginning here,” center fielder Brett Butler said. “I thought we had a love affair going. But obviously we don’t. Obviously it’s the same old fans, the same old front runners. I can’t believe they’re that brutal, but I’ll never forget it.”

Rick Sutcliffe could blame injuries for his 8-8 record last year. He could blame a lack of support for his 1-6 mark this year, the Chicago Cubs having scored seven runs in his six defeats. Sutcliffe does neither.

“A little bit of it is tough luck and a lot of it is plain bad pitching,” he said. “I’m trying to do things I’m really not capable of. I can’t keep men off base and I can’t keep the ball in the park. This is one of the toughest times for me.”

Having moved Carlton Fisk back to catcher in the wake of his recent vote of confidence, Chicago White Sox Manager Tony LaRussa said that Vice President Ken Harrelson has been unfairly blamed for the initial decision to put Fisk in left and rookie Joel Skinner behind the plate. LaRussa said he and his coaches made the decision before Harrelson was appointed to his job.

“If you’re going to call it a failure, blame it on us,” LaRussa said.

Skinner was hitting .157 and had thrown out only 1 of 12 base stealers when Fisk returned behind the plate and threw out the first two runners who tried to steal against him.

The age of parity, or mediocrity: As of Friday, last year’s four division champions--the Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals and Toronto Blue Jays--were a combined 13 games under .500, and the four teams that finished last--San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates, Cleveland and Texas--were a combined eight games over.

Candy Maldonado’s three pinch homers and nine runs batted in represent more productivity than the combined totals of every National League team’s pinch-hitters except the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves.

It’s a Catch-22 for Maldonado, however.

The more the ex-Dodger hits in the pinch, the more likely he is to remain in that capacity, although he has started the last two games.

The early success of the Rangers has prompted owner Eddie Chiles to give Manager Bobby Valentine and General Manager Tom Grieve guaranteed contract extensions. “We have found jewels in both these men,” Chiles said. “If you have jewels, you take insurance out.” . . . There have been 53 homers hit in 17 games amid the friendly confines of Wrigley Field. The pace projects to 253, which would break the major league record of 248 produced in another Wrigley Field, the 1961 home of the expansion Angels.

John Denny is a born-again Christian, but he can’t seem to turn the other cheek. His alleged altercation with Cincinnati Post writer Bruce Schoenfeld is just the latest in a series of unpleasant events involving Denny and the press. . . . When the Brewers sent coach Frank Howard home for arthroscopic knee surgery, fellow coach Larry Haney said: “Hondo is so big they had to use a chain saw.”

The Sparky Anderson foot-in-mouth award goes to Minnesota Twin Manager Ray Miller, who said of rookie second baseman Steve Lombardozzi: “He makes the double play better than any second baseman I’ve ever seen.” . . . New York Yankee management is convinced that it will obtain Tom Seaver by midseason as long as the White Sox aren’t involved in the race.

Oakland, in a span of five days last week, put four players on the disabled list--relief ace Jay Howell with a forearm strain, center fielder Dwayne Murphy with a lower back injury, catcher Mickey Tettleton with an infected foot, and middle reliever Bill Krueger with a sore elbow. The loss of Howell compounds the recent ineffectiveness of Steve Ontiveros, who saved eight games as a 1985 rookie. Ontiveros shaved his beard last week, saying, “It wasn’t producing so I sent it down.” . . . After costly errors in consecutive games at Oakland Tuesday and Wednesday, Toronto second baseman Damaso Garcia removed his uniform, doused it with alcohol and set it on fire.

Former Angel Don Aase, who won 10 games and saved 14 for Baltimore last year, continues to turn his 1983 elbow operation into a distant memory. Aase has converted 8 of 10 save opportunities in holding hitters to a .161 average. “The guy is amazing,” George Brett said. “If I could throw like that I’d get one of those operations, too.” . . . A six-game Baltimore winning streak through Thursday stemmed in part from the batting revival of Fred Lynn when moved from fifth to third in the order. Cal Ripken dropped from third to fifth.

“I just have always felt comfortable in the third spot,” Lynn said. “It’s where I’ve always hit. It’s inevitable I’ll see better pitches with those guys (Eddie Murray and Ripken) hitting behind me.”

Murray, in response to a struggling start, has been wearing glasses periodically. The Orioles would like him to give them a full-time try.

Tony LaRussa, given his reprieve, said that the White Sox will now play every game as if it’s the seventh game of the World Series. And what happens if the White Sox reach the seventh game? “Then we’ll have a lot of experience,” LaRussa said.