This Just May Give Angels Something to Talk About Now

Grandfathers do not nestle children into their laps and regale them with tales of Angel games of old. They have no yarns to weave, no legends to spin. There are no glorious World Series games to reminisce about, no stories to tell about the day Babe Ruth came to town, no hallowed grounds or ruins of a once palatial stadium gone to seed.

About the best they can do is gab about the time reckless Ryne Duren flung one halfway to the press box, or about that whippersnapper Bo Belinsky pitching a no-hitter in the second month of the team’s second season. Belinsky probably was in a hurry to mow down the Orioles that day because he had a hot date with Mamie van Doren after the game, Grandpa will add for spice. “Mamie who?” the kid on his knee will ask.

They were born and christened the Los Angeles Angels a quarter-century ago, and quite a sight they were in their infancy. They had the big thumper, Steve Bilko, and the little rabbit, Albie Pearson. They had Leon (Daddy Wags) Wagner, who missed 29 games and still clubbed 28 home runs, and they had the durable pitcher with the serious vowel shortage, Eli Grba.

Bad as they were--they finished 70-91 that first season, 38 1/2 games out of first place--the Angels of 1961 did have five different guys who swatted 20 or more home runs, which is more than the Angels of today can say. They had hope back then, hope and faith in the possibilities of tomorrow. Plus, a pretty good young pitcher named Chance and a young infielder named Fregosi. Tomorrow seemed teeming with promise.

Pages fell from the calendar.

Players came and went. Names changed, including the name of the team. New managers arrived to see if they could do what Bill Rigney could not--namely, see if they could get this whipped pup of a franchise within sniffing distance of first place before a baseball season came to a close. Not until 1979, by which time Jim Fregosi had traded his bat and mitt for a pencil and lineup card, did the Angels come any closer than five games from first place.

They say you have to learn how to crawl before you learn how to walk, but by then the Angels’ knees were killing them. They were eager to get up. Their 1979 roster was rife with talent, from Don Baylor to Rod Carew to Carney Lansford to Nolan Ryan to Dickie Thon. They had a musclebound kid with the burdensome handle of Willie Mays Aikens who sent 21 homers flying in 379 at-bats, and they had a fitness freak of a catcher they had pinched from the White Sox the year before, Brian Downing, who batted .326 for the season.

No wonder these guys finished only three games out of first. Everything about them indicated that the Angels were going to be contenders, going to be somebodies. Look at some of those nifty young pitchers the staff had: Don Aase, Mark Clear, Frank Tanana. Why, these guys probably will still be effective in the majors years from now, the Angels surely thought.

They ran right out the following season and won 65 of their 160 games. Baylor, Aikens and Downing combined for seven home runs. The only pitchers on the staff with winning records were the immortals Andy Hassler, John Montague and Ed Halicki. The darlings of Anaheim were 32 games out of first place by the time the 1980 season ended, and Fregosi must have been wondering if he would ever manage anyplace else.

No, there is no lore to discuss. No need to bring up the good old days, when it comes to the California Angels. The Angels have never had good old days. They have had days, period.

“Some of us remember how close we came to making the World Series a few years ago, and it makes you think,” Downing was saying the other day, when the Angels were closing in on the division championship. “I mean, that’s all the California Angels have to remember: ‘Almost made the World Series.’ It’s a little sad.”

Then again, tradition has to start somewhere. The grandchildren of 2086 are not going to mind that the Angels were nobodies until their silver anniversary. They are not going to ask what took them so long. They are not going to inquire about the 1961 club that used 46 different hitters and 18 different pitchers, from Faye Throneberry to Roman Semproch. Medieval history won’t interest them.

What they will want to know about is what got into the Angels of 1986. “What was Reggie Jackson really like?” “What the heck was Wally World?” “Is it true Gene Mauch managed 25 different teams before he ever got into a World Series?” They will be wondering about these things a century from now, provided the Angels have done something worth remembering.

What they have done so far has been memorable. They ran away with their division with a lineup that has no .300 hitters and a rotation that has no 20-game winners. Their team batting average is as ordinary as ordinary gets. Their team age average qualifies them for senior-citizen discounts in theaters and on buses.

What a roster they came into the season with: One of their starting pitchers, Don Sutton, was 41 years old. They told Rod Carew to get lost and gave first base to the rawest of rookies, Wally Joyner, a man without a big league at-bat. They gave right field to George Hendrick, a fellow who stepped to the plate more than 300 times the previous season and clanked out 64 hits.

As the season progressed, the Angels in the outfield, Gary Pettis and Downing, were crashing into one another. Pitcher John Candelaria got hurt. Pitcher Ron Romanick went haywire. Relief pitcher Donnie Moore piped his shoulder full of cortisone. Catcher Bob Boone flirted with a .200 batting average. And the almighty Reggie wondered why his rigorous off-season body building had sapped him of his strength to reach the seats.

And still the Angels won. With mirrors, perhaps. Or with hustle and persistence, more likely. Joyner carried them halfway. Jackson regained his strength. Hendrick remained mute and carried a big stick. Candelaria and Moore persevered. Downing and Doug DeCinces were a smash. Boone and Dick Schofield wore gilded gloves. Rick Burleson and Doug Corbett resuscitated dead careers. Mike Witt and Kirk McCaskill starred in Lifestyles of the Rich and Underrated.

Above all else, they believed in themselves. When the Angels were losing to second-place Texas last Friday on the night they were trying to clinch, the ripe old Mauch turned to the greenhorn Joyner in the dugout. “It was about 8:58, and Gene turned to me and said: ‘When are we gonna get ‘em?’ And I said: ‘Nine o’clock.’ And Gary Pettis hit his home run at 9:03, and between 9 and 10 o’clock we scored eight runs,” Joyner said. Which is how the American League West was won.

They partied later, giving champagne shampoos, snipping newsmen’s neckties with scissors, using shaken beer bottles like fire hoses. But their work was just beginning. The California Angels, never having been to a World Series, much less having won one, had two more leaps to make. First, the American League playoffs. Then, the World Series. This was the road to tradition. This was the way to become somebodies.