The Angels, Team of Destination : In Their Own Quiet Way, This Team Is Fired Up and Going Places

Let’s just say the Angels hang onto their nice little lead and win it all this season--the division, the league, the World Series.

What a story it would be! I can see the headlines: Angels Shake ‘Big A’ Hex . . . Skipper Gene’s Crew Hits Mauch 1 . . . Oldies but Besties . . . Anaheim Goes Berserk . . .

If you’re an Angel player or an Angel fan, this current seven-game winning streak, this little rash of miracles and clutch performances, is something to get really excited about.

Or is it?

Yeah, sort of, in a way, it is.

It’s just hard to tell sometimes. The Angels are a veteran club. Pennant drives are no novelty. Most of these guys, they’ve been here before. Most of these guys, they’ve been everywhere before.

They’re excited, but the Angels know how to be excited in a cool way. Like after Sunday’s 5-3 win over the Detroit Tigers, completing a four-game sweep and extending the team’s win streak to seven, the clubhouse was cool.

At least it was cool five minutes after the last out, after the 5-minute, no-media, cooling-off period, which the Angels take literally. They cool off. I’d be surprised if they have warm water in the showers.

Don’t think they’re not excited, though.

“If you were in here immediately after (the game) there’d be no doubt in anyone’s mind how they feel,” Manager Gene Mauch said.

Mauch has an honest face, so I tend to believe him. I’m sure the team celebrated enthusiastically for five minutes, then lapsed into a collective near coma when the press invaded.

Still, I think it’s safe to say this is a team that’s not going to fade in the stretch because it celebrated too soon or too hard. If these guys win it all, they might loosen up and squirt Perrier on one another. Or carbonated prune juice.

“You shoulda been here two nights ago,” said Brian Downing, referring to the Immaculate Connection, Dick Schofield’s Friday night grand slam that capped an eight-run inning and comeback win. “It was very, very wild, like we just clinched the pennant.”

Hey, you can’t party like that after every game, even when you’re on a monumental roll.

“You play almost 200 games in the course of a year,” Downing said. “You can’t get too worked up with four or five weeks left in the season. You can’t let it all hang out now and risk coming back flat down the stretch.”

No hang-out problem here in the Angel clubhouse. I’ve been in wilder libraries.

But I guess it’s like Motown Manager Sparky Anderson said after Sunday’s game, when asked if a win like Friday night’s thriller could jack the Angels up.

“They’re playing well, they don’t need no jacking up,” said Sparky glumly, lighting his pipe.

Maybe the Angels simply don’t want to rile up the gods of good fortune. Maybe they’re thinking they are becoming what Houston pitcher Charlie Kerfeld would call a “team of destination.”

Sunday the Angels get a run because a routine fly ball hit by Wally Joyner gets lost in the sun. The sun, as we all know, revolves around Wally World.

The three winning runs come on a ball that drops maybe two inches in front of the diving Tiger center fielder’s glove.

This, as Sparky might say, ain’t to take nothing away from the Angels. Reggie Jackson starts the rally with a two-out walk, looking at a 3-2 change-up that’s maybe an inch and a half high. This is big-league restraint on Reggie’s part. Fat pitches to Reggie are like fat necks to vampires. Hard not to bite.

But the Angels showed big-league team intelligence. They know Tiger starting pitcher Walt Terrell is like a lady of the evening--he makes his living working the corners, and sometimes this gets him in trouble. Terrell has a history of being hurt by walks. Sunday, three Angel batters scored after walking. That was the difference in the game. If Reggie hacks at that nice little 3-2 pitch, these two teams might still be playing.

It’s all part of being cool. And being cool is infectious. Even the Anaheim fans are cool. Sure, with two out in the ninth and Donnie Moore ahead of the count to pinch-hitter Kirk Gibson, 1-2, the fans who were still in the stadium rose to their collective feet. But that was not necessarily a display of enthusiasm, but more likely what is known in the track world as a rolling start, toward the parking lot.

The Angels, whatever celebrating they did Sunday was done discreetly, in the private confines of the players’ lounge, which is off limits to the press and therefore a popular Angel postgame hangout.

Maybe, with pinkies extended, the Angels clinked tea cups with one another. Maybe they turned up their television a little louder than usual, or exchanged a few firm handshakes.

Garth Iorg, the Toronto player who not long ago compared the Angels unfavorably to the Texas Rangers on the enthusiasm scale, had it wrong. The Angels are plenty enthusiastic, in their own quiet way.

“Garth Iorg will never win a Pulitzer Prize, or be invited to address the Senate,” said Mauch, cooly.

The Angels, on the other hand, might wind up visiting the White House in late October. Because they’re not cold. They’re cool.