Emotional Rescue : Terry Forster Readily Employs Arsenal of Punch Lines and Knockout Pitches to Provide Angels With Necessary Relief

Five uniforms and 16 seasons later, Terry Forster still stomps out of bullpens like he is late for a bar brawl. Forster has perfected the look, this glazed, dazed facial expression--part scowl, part sneer--that goes well with someone carrying a tire iron in a poorly lighted alley.

Other relievers like to take their time, treating each step to the mound like the march from a frozen Stalingrad. The warmup jacket is worn just so, the glove tucked under an arm, the head tilted toward the audience, feet moving through imaginary taffy. Show nothing, except prearranged cool.

Not Forster. He wears his emotions on his sleeves, his cap, his pants, wherever. Forster wants everyone to know his purpose. “Off-speed pitch? I don’t need no stinkin’ off-speed pitch .”

Forster heaves sliders, sinkers and fastballs toward the plate and dares hitters to punch his pitches into the darkness. When they do, he gets angry.

Take the day Forster was summoned from the bullpen to preserve a 5-4, seventh-inning Angel lead over the Kansas City Royals. With the lead came the added pressure of knowing Don Sutton’s 300th career victory was less than three innings away.

With one out and men on first and second, Forster allowed a Rudy Law single to right, that scored Willie Wilson, tied the game and postponed Sutton’s 300th win for another day. The Angels eventually beat the Royals, which was nice for Manager Gene Mauch but of only moderate consolation for Forster, who later said he thought of tackling Wilson as he rounded third.

Forster has changed his mind since. Such talk was the product of rash, emotional thinking.

“I’d trip him,” Forster now says.

Two months have passed since the Angels signed Forster to a one-year contract chock-full of incentive and performance clauses. No one was quite sure what to expect when he arrived April 16 at Anaheim Stadium for a tryout. He had lost weight, to be sure, but had he also lost his fastball, as the Atlanta Braves claimed when they released him on the infamous “April Fools’ Day Massacre”?

Out from the dugout stepped General Manager Mike Port, pitching coach Marcel Lachemann and Mauch. Forster, wearing a borrowed pair of Reggie Jackson’s cleats, took only 20 minutes to convince them that he was worth the trouble. A contract was signed, Forster was placed in the bullpen and breaths were held.

In his first game, a ninth-inning appearance against the Minnesota Twins, Forster faced pinch-hitter Mickey Hatcher. “Struck him out,” Forster says quickly, the team and batter securely tucked in his memory.

Eight weeks later, Forster is the Angel left-handed stopper, which says something about Forster and a little something about the state of the bullpen. Donnie Moore and Gary Lucas are still no-shows, victims of shoulder and back injuries. Ken Forsch has been released. Three rookies and veteran Doug Corbett, used as the right-handed stopper, complete the list of relievers.

“I planned on being the left-handed stopper when I came here,” Forster says. “All I knew is all they had to do was see me throw.”

The results have been mixed for Forster (3 saves, 4.37 earned-run average in 22 innings), but there is no ignoring his effect. Mauch uses him frequently and with little hesitation. Forster, if nothing else, is dependable and willing. Already his shoulder has been stuck with a syringe-full of cortisone.

“My theory is anytime I take that mound, regardless of how I feel or if something’s wrong with me, I don’t feel it,” he says. “I’ve got a job to do and that’s to get the hitters out, and I’m going to do it anyway I can. Anyway, I think the last time I was 100% was my senior year in high school.”

Says Mauch: “He’s been available beyond what I had a right to expect. I have a great appreciation for that. He’s an old-time ballplayer. He comes to a ballpark to win a game and he would like to be part of it. He’s an old-time ballplayer out of the old-time mold.”

The mold would also include old-time clubhouse pranks. Forster spares no one. He has victimized reliever T.R. Bryden, once leaving supposed phone messages from family members that rang directly to the San Diego Zoo. When Corbett and pitcher John Candelaria were involved in a mild skirmish several weeks ago in the Comiskey Park outfield, Forster could be heard later delivering light verbal barbs.

All of this is somewhat new to the Angels. Pitcher Jim Slaton remains the Angels’ best-known jokester, along with infielder Rick Burleson, Corbett, Candelaria and Moore. “But I’m the loudest, that’s the trouble,” Forster says.

True enough, Forster’s voice probably could be heard over the rattle of a hydraulic drill. And it doesn’t help that his locker is located closest to the office of Mauch, a quiet, intense man who enjoys a good laugh if the timing is correct. But sometimes it is not, and Forster has been reminded of proper Angel clubhouse decorum.

“The whole thing is, basically, if you can’t have fun playing this game then you can’t have fun doing nothing,” he said. “You can really have fun if you win. I’m going to get them loose, I’m going to get them talking, get them motivated. Hey, I rip people and they rip me back. You need to get them to open up a little bit, have some fun, relax. You go into that pennant drive, I’ll tell you what, if you play tight, you make mistakes.”

Moore, who played with Forster in Atlanta, has noticed subtle changes in the Angel locker room. In past seasons, you looked for toe tags after a loss, what with the morgue-like atmosphere. This year, for the most part, the edge has been softened a bit. No one celebrates losses, but at least there’s no mad rush for sharp objects.

“Everybody seems to be a little more loose,” Moore says. “There’s not that tense feeling. With Terry around, there’s always going to be a laugh. He’s always going to have something going. He gets on everybody.”

But Moore adds that Forster contributes something besides one-liners.

“He’s always the same,” he says. “He wants the ball every day. A ballplayer has to respect that kind of attitude. You see a guy that’s been around as long as he has and still has the desire. Terry would do anything to help the team, even if he had to hit. He’ll do anything: long (relief), short. He’d probably even start if Gene asked him.”

There was a time when Forster was known exclusively for his pitching, rather than his humor or his appearances on “Late Night With David Letterman.” While with the Chicago White Sox in 1973, Forster’s performances once prompted Manager Chuck Tanner to remark: “I don’t know if anyone has offered anything like half a team for him, but it wouldn’t make any difference. They couldn’t get him.”

In a twist of fate, Tanner, now with the Braves, released Forster this past spring.

Forster generally turns the other cheek when discussing the Braves and their decision. No hard feelings and all that. But occasionally, other emotions sneak through.

“No. 1, I didn’t think I had to make that team; not that pitching staff,” Forster says. “The No. 2 thing is when I go to spring training, I go there to get my arm in shape. I’ll go out one inning and throw nothing but sinkers. I’ll go out the next inning and throw nothing but sliders. Then I go hard my next two or three times out. Then I start busting the ball. They released me before that, said I wasn’t throwing the ball good.

“There’s nobody on that pitching staff in Atlanta that throws the ball harder than I do,” he says. “The whole thing was that I wasn’t in their plans. That’s all there was to it. I just wasn’t in their plans.”

It is not entirely clear where he fits with the Angels. This was supposed to be Lucas’ job. But injuries have a tendency to disrupt paper plans. It shows, too. The Angel bullpen is suspect and will remain that way as long as Lucas and Moore remain absent.

“I don’t care what our team ERA is,” Forster says. “Hey, we’re still in contention and we’re there and we’re going to be there until we get the rest of the guys healthy. We’ll do what it takes, I’ll tell you that.”

As for his own situation, Forster remains noncommittal, though you get the idea that humility is trying to pull a fast one on honesty.

“We’ll find out what happens,” he says. “If you do the job, you’re gonna be in their plans. If you don’t, you have no business being out there. That’s for anybody. That’s the name of the game. If you don’t produce, you don’t belong there. That’s all you can ask from anybody. But I love getting out there on my hill of thrills, that’s where you have the fun.

“When I’m out on the mound, I’ve got like a movie projector in my head,” he says. “I can actually visualize me throwing the ball before I throw it. I think that’s what’s kept me around for so long, other than being left-handed. I don’t hear nothing when I’m out on that mound. A bomb could go off and I wouldn’t be aware of it. It’s just me, the catcher, the umpire and the batter.”

Nothing makes him happier. For Forster, life has always begun in the eighth inning, one out, runners on first and second.