Can’t Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm : Mike Cook Is Latest to Benefit From New Angel Attitude

There was a time when being drafted by the Angels was kind of like hearing you had just won a cruise through the Bermuda Triangle.

You knew you were going somewhere, but weren’t sure if you’d ever be heard from again.

The Angels had a farm system, sure, but they might as well have been using it to grow lima beans.

Free agency and baseball met in 1976 and the Angels embraced it like a kid does a new toy.

There wasn’t a player, good or bad, who couldn’t be bought or sold. And the Angels set out to prove it.

Meanwhile, down below, locked in the dregs of the organization, the careers of promising players blossomed and died. But is all that changing now?

There was Tuesday night, for instance. Standing on the mound for the Angels was 22-year-old Mike Cook, only hours removed from a bumpy bus ride with the team’s Double-A team in Midland.

Then someone made a phone call and suddenly Cook was facing the Chicago White Sox at Anaheim Stadium.

Cook’s record in the minors was only 4-6, but Angel Manager Gene Mauch thought he’d give the kid a look.

“He’s going to be a big league pitcher some day,” Mauch said. “Why not find out now?”

Cook lasted only three innings Tuesday, giving up five hits and five runs (four earned), striking out one and walking two in defeat, but that wasn’t really the point.

This was more of a litmus test.

“I know he has the stuff,” Mauch said of Cook. “I just want to see if he can handle it up here.”

It had worked before. Last year, Mauch gave the same chance to Kirk McCaskill and he pitched his way into the starting rotation. Ron Romanick got the same chance the year before that.

Stu Cliburn, who started the 1985 season in the minors, was recalled in April and become an effective reliever. Same story for pitcher Urbano Lugo.

What you have here is a team undergoing an attitude change.

“This,” Angel General Manager Mike Port said, “is now an organization of opportunity. If you pay attention to your work, tomorrow, you could be right here.”

Ask Mike Cook.

Who would have ever thought it? This from the team that once handed out million-dollar contracts like food stamps. This from the team that stuffed the pockets of the likes of John D’Acquisto, Bill Travers and Frank LaCorte.

But the Angels apparently are intent on righting their wrongs.

Free agency, they learned after all these years, wasn’t the way.

“We tried to do it,” Port said. “And it didn’t work.”

So now, every night at the stadium, you can come out watch for yourself as the Angels weed out the old and bring in the new.

It all started early this year when the Angels declined to resign superstar Rod Carew.

More recently, the Angels have released high-priced pitchers Ken Forsch and Jim Slaton.

Many expect there will be more changes to come. Six veteran Angels--Doug DeCinces, Reggie Jackson, Brian Downing, Rick Burleson and Bobby Grich--are in the final year of their contracts.

This is now an organization, Port said, where you can be playing for Waterloo one day and against New York the next.

“We’ve been able to accelerate development,” Port said.

There are a few Angels who are grateful for the chance.

The 25-year-old McCaskill was 12-12 as a rookie in 1985 and is 8-5 so far this season.

“It’s kind of been like trial and error for them,” McCaskill said of the Angels. “Free agency failed for them. It’s been a good time for me; otherwise, I would have never gotten a shot.”

Nor would have Mike Cook.

Without the burden of huge, long-term contracts hanging over their head, Port said the Angels have the flexibility to take chances.

Mauch said Cook’s debut Tuesday night wasn’t life or death. It was more another peak into the future. Mauch: “If it’s an adventure with a veteran pitcher out there, why not experience the game with a kid who might get better?”