Playoffs Are a Blessing for Angels’ Candelaria

John Candelaria is back in the playoffs, and the smile is back on John Candelaria’s face. For a long while, you could have gotten odds on which would reappear first.

Both were there in 1975, when Candelaria was a gangly 21-year-old kid with a Brooklyn attitude and a fastball that could outrun the Downtown Express. Only months after recalling him from Charleston, the Pittsburgh Pirates shoved the rookie out to the mound and told him to beat the Cincinnati Reds. These were the Rose-Morgan-Bench-Perez Reds, who liked to advertise themselves as the best team since the ’27 Yankees.

Candelaria lasted 7 innings. He allowed 3 hits. He struck out 14 Reds, a National League postseason record that stood alone until Mike Scott matched it Wednesday night.

The Pirates were brushed aside in three games, but for Candelaria, the future was so bright, he had to wear shades.

“I was 21 years old and in the playoffs,” Candelaria said. “I expected to make them every year.”

At 23, Candelaria was an All-Star, a 20-game winner, a league leader in earned-run average. At 25, he was a World Series champion.

Then, the 1970s ran out, and Candelaria got old in a hurry.

In 1981, he tore a muscle in his pitching arm during his sixth start, underwent surgery and missed the rest of the season.

In 1982, he returned to a team that had squandered its prime and was going nowhere.

In 1983 and 1984, he demanded to go elsewhere. To expedite the process, he repeatedly blasted Pittsburgh management, hoping to goad the Pirates into a trade.

In 1985, the Pirates sent him somewhere--first, to the bullpen, then out of the league. In a massive salary-dumping maneuver, Pittsburgh dealt Candelaria, George Hendrick and Al Holland to the Angels for three rookies and three mini-contracts.

This was the trade Candelaria had been braying for, but it proved something less than a panacea. During the winter, Candelaria’s 2 1/2-year-old son, John Robert, died after having spent nearly a year in a coma following a swimming accident. The trauma of the death, Candelaria thought, could only be blotted out by returning to the mound and pouring everything into his pitching.

Then Candelaria reported to the Angels’ 1986 spring training camp--and discovered that he couldn’t pitch.

Calcification in his left elbow had cracked, resulting in bone spurs that dug into nerve endings. Candelaria started a game during the first week of April and by the second inning could barely deliver the ball to home plate underhanded.

More surgery. More time on the disabled list.

Candelaria wondered why life, once as simple as a 1-2-3 inning, had suddenly decided to take him deep with the bases loaded.

“The last couple of years have taught me to deal with reality,” Candelaria says.

Tonight, Game 3 of the 1986 American League championship series will be played at Anaheim Stadium. Candelaria will start for the Angels against the winners of the East, the Boston Red Sox.

Rick Burleson, an Angel teammate, is getting a deserved push as the league’s Comeback Player of the Year, but how Candelaria got from Point A to Game 3 should get him at least a few votes.

“Absolutely remarkable,” Angel Manager Gene Mauch said. “To be out as long as he was and then come back with the control and the stuff he has shown. John Candelaria is something special.”

After three months on the disabled list, Candelaria rejoined the Angels July 8 in Milwaukee. He pitched five shutout innings. His next start? Five more shutout innings against the team he will face tonight--at Fenway Park, yet.

Candelaria won his first three decisions and was 8-2 by Sept. 26. That evening, he was the pitcher of record as the Angels clinched the American League West title with an 8-3 victory over Texas.

One more start against the Rangers generated six more shutout innings. Candelaria finished the regular season at 10-2 and with the lowest earned-run average on the team, 2.55.

When Mauch announced his pitching rotation for Boston, there was some sentiment in the clubhouse that the Angels were saving their best for third.

“John is a big-game pitcher,” said Doug DeCinces, who dug in against him during the 1979 World Series. “He has been, his whole career.

“In ‘79, he was tough, very tough. I’m looking at him from a different angle now, but from what I can see, I’m real happy that he’s on our side.”

Bob Boone, the Angel catcher, provides a scouting report from a little more than 60 feet away.

“He throws some pitches that are unhittable,” Boone said. “I know what he’s got and I know what to expect. He can be a dominating pitcher.

“If he throws the way I think he can, it won’t matter what lineup the Red Sox use. I think the people in the white uniforms (Friday) will be real happy.”

Candelaria said he doesn’t need to wait until the final out tonight. He says he’s already happy.

Why?

“First of all, I’m not in Pittsburgh,” he said.

“It’s tough going to the ballpark in August when you’re 25, 26 games out of first place. At that point, all you’re playing for is to pad your stats. I’ve always felt that I’ve been a team player. It’s nice to have good stats but nicer to play with a winning ballclub.

“It’s nice to hear laughter in the clubhouse again. It’s nice to be treated like a human being, instead of like a piece of meat.”

In less than a full season with the Angels--two months in 1985 and three in 1986--Candelaria is a combined 17-5 with an earned-run average of 3.10.

He is particularly impressed with the last 10 victories.

“In April, the doctor was inside my elbow for 3 1/2 hours,” Candelaria said. “To come back and finish 10-2 in a pretty damn good season.”

Candelaria is feeling good again, smiling again. The old cockiness has swaggered to the forefront.

Before Game 2 in Boston, Candelaria kept a huddle of reporters entertained with such odds and ends as:

--The Pittsburgh years. “In Pittsburgh, it was always, ‘You don’t win enough games, you should be a 20-game winner all the time,’ ” Candelaria said. “It’s like what they did to Mike Witt. I definitely can relate to that.

“They said I never lived up to my potential, but I looked at my record and saw I was 50 games over .500. I don’t see too many pitchers near there. I can see how Michael gets frustrated when people try to put that tag on him.”

--Fenway Park. “It wouldn’t even faze me to pitch there,” he said. “I don’t care where I pitch. I’d pitch in a matchbox. The Wall doesn’t scare me. If I’m throwing the ball where I want it 90% of the time, it doesn’t matter where I pitch or who I pitch to.”

--The duties of a starting pitcher. “I’m paid to go seven innings,” he said. “They pay relievers to go the other two. Right now, I can’t go more than seven, anyway, so c’mon Donnie Moore.”

--His manager. “Gene’s different,” Candelaria said. “He’s from the old school; he hates mistakes and mental lapses. I can see that; I can see why he expects a player to hustle all the time.

“He’s a fair manager. He’s tough, but he’s got to be tough. When he takes me out of a ballgame, I don’t question him. He doesn’t question me when a ball goes over the fence, so why should I question him? He’s doing his job as well as he can.”

--His premature return to the starting rotation. “I was rushed,” he said. “At the time, we really didn’t have a fourth and fifth starter. Ronnie Romanick wasn’t throwing that well, and all we really had was Witt, McCaskill and Sutton. We needed another pitcher, and I was that pitcher.

“I’m not putting the blame on Gene Mauch. I was right there with him. I never said slow down. I knew I was rushing it . . . and I responded to it.”

--His two-week hiatus in September when the arm responded with pain. “That made we quite aware that I was not indestructible--and I thought I was,” Candelaria said. “The arm’s telling you something. Stop--this is how you make your living. You don’t want to ruin that.”

--And the future. “I’ve been clocked anywhere from 90 to 95 (m.p.h.) in my last couple of starts,” he said. “I know I’m throwing the ball well, better than I have in seven or eight years. And from now on, I think I’m going to get better.”

Why?

“My arm is not bothering me. Things are off my mind,” said Candelaria, who turns 33 in November. “I’m on a great, veteran ballclub, which has to help any pitcher.

“It’s time to let my talent come out.”

A capacity crowd at Anaheim Stadium and a national television audience will begin to be the judges of that, beginning tonight.