It’s Spring Training Time for Angels’ Fans, Too

It was three hours before the first pitch, but already Jason Witt and his buddy Brooks Stratmore, a pair of 13-year-old fans, had slipped through an unattended gate and were flagging down baseball players, asking for autographs.

“I got a bat from Wally Joyner,” beamed Jason, whose grandfather brought him to Angels Stadium on Tuesday--the real Angels Stadium, where the California Angels finish spring training before opening the regular season at Anaheim Stadium on April 7.

Jason and Brooks said they should have been in literature class about 400 miles away in Danville, a Bay Area suburb. But like many of the 4,492 others who flocked to the Angels’ minor league ballpark Tuesday, they had chosen instead to root for the home team, hound players for autographs and herald the arrival of spring.

Active Baseball Fan

“They get out of school every year for this,” said Rog Witt, Jason’s grandfather, a retired Palm Springs resident but an active baseball fan. “They have got it all figured out where to get autographs.”

“These kids are nuts about baseball,” said Witt, who doesn’t know for sure but hopes his family is related to Angel pitcher Mike Witt.

“But they (Jason and Brooks) have to leave tonight, and they are dying a thousand deaths. They have exams tomorrow.”

Since 1982, the Angels have split their spring training between Palm Springs and Arizona. The team has played in Palm Springs off and on since the club’s first year in 1961. This year they arrived here on March 20 and will play through April 1.

Spring training doubles as a mini-tourist boon for the town, a club spokesman said. Many fans plan vacations around the games at Angels Stadium, which was expanded last year and seats more than 4,000. The Angels’ minor league club also plays its home games here.

Faces in the Crowd

In the crowd Tuesday were Robert Boulware of Long Beach and his father-in-law, Henry Brumm, who had to cut short their baseball outing this week. A sudden domestic development would force Boulware to leave a day early, he said from his reserved seat behind third base.

“We had tickets to come out here today and tomorrow,” Boulware said. “But my wife had a 10-pound, 4-ounce baby boy, so I have to pick her up at the hospital tomorrow.”

A few rows up in the grandstands sat Angel season ticket holders Lynn and Sue Hoppie of Westminster.

School Skipped

It was shoe salesman Lynn Hoppie’s regular day off, but 6-year-old son Jason, slurping on ice cream in the seat beside him, was supposed to be in school, the boy’s mother confessed. Sue Hoppie offered her best explanation: “We have season tickets to the Angels, but we’ve always wanted to come out here, so. . . . “

Almost inning by inning the score mounted. One to nothing. Two to nothing. Three. Four. Five to zero!

But those weren’t Angels crossing home plate. They were--cringe at the very thought--Chicago Cubs.

“I’ve been a Cubs’ fan since I was 2 days old,” crowed Steve Benke of San Bernardino, recalling his earliest days in Kokomo, Ind., which is close enough to Chicago to get televised Cubs games.

Watched Cubs on TV

“My mom said when they first brought me home from the hospital, I was content watching the Cubs on TV,” recalled Benke, thumbing through his baseball cards. His wife Sally nodded.

“I didn’t cry at all,” he boasted.

However, as any baseball follower knows, being a Cub fan means having to say, “I cried.”

“I cried in ’64 and ‘84,” a wincing Benke said of two years Chicago nearly made it to the World Series.

“But this is the year!” he assured everyone within earshot.

Joe Romano, a service station manager from Huntington Beach, had to admit his Angels have done better.

“Yesterday was a better game,” Romano said after the final Angel had been retired.

The Angels won that one.

Gathered Autographs

“But I got a lot of good signatures,” Romano said, triumphantly holding up his consolation prize, a baseball covered with autographs. “My kid’s going to love this ball.”

One of the beauties of baseball is its symmetry. For every winner, there is a loser.

Late in the game, the assorted relatives by marriage of Cubs reserve catcher Damon Berryhill erupted with joy when he stroked a hit for the first time all day.

“It’s the Berryhill fan club,” said a proud Carol Gobby of South Laguna. Gobby was but one of 13 who cheered on the 23-year-old catcher, who happens to be married to her daughter Ann.

It may only have been spring training, but the Angels Stadium crowd was in mid-season form. By the eighth inning, many had left. By the top of the ninth, with a Chicago-like wind whipping through the stands, the shivering fans, most of them wearing just shorts and a shirt, were in a veritable stampede to the exits.

Back to Classroom

Joe Romano headed back to his service station. Robert Boulware set out to be with his wife and new son. And Jason Witt would return to school and exams.

Sooner or later, in one way or another, they all can be counted on to return.

As Jason said: “I’m gonna be a pro player when I grow up.”

With unabashed confidence, he even offered his own autograph to an Angel.

“I told him: ‘You want my autograph? I’m going to be famous one day.’ ”