Mauch’s Announcement Catches Angels by Surprise

Catchers Butch Wynegar and Bob Boone were taking batting practice early Friday morning when someone yelled from the Angel clubhouse: “Team meeting at 9:15. Be there.”

Wynegar groaned. He had planned to loosen up and do some extra hitting before the Angels boarded a bus for an afternoon exhibition game in nearby Chandler. Now this.

“Put it on the (bulletin) board if you’re going to have a meeting,” Wynegar yelled back.

What was it this time: Player representative update? Vote for team captain?

Nope. It had to be the Angels’ uninspired 6-2 loss to the Cleveland Indians a day earlier, Wynegar finally decided. The Angels had played poorly and now Manager Gene Mauch was going to read them the riot act.

“I thought Gene was just going to air us out a little bit,” Wynegar said later.

Wynegar and Boone were the last to arrive in the crowded clubhouse. When they got there, they knew this would be no ordinary meeting.

Standing in the middle of the room was Mauch--in street clothes. Mauch is usually in uniform by 7:30 each morning.

General Manager Mike Port was there, too, and so was advance scout Cookie Rojas.

“Gene didn’t look real good, but I had no idea what was going on,” Wynegar said. “I thought either he was resigning or something. I knew something was wrong. And once he started talking, I just got the worst feeling in the world.”

Mauch, in a brief, heartfelt announcement, said that he was temporarily leaving the team to undergo tests for an unspecified and lingering illness, that Rojas would take his place until his return--whenever that might be.

So emotional was the moment, Wynegar said, that Mauch’s eyes were filled with tears and, at times, he had trouble finishing a sentence.

Wynegar said he doesn’t remember much about the speech after that. There was something about how good a team the Angels could be, how many games they could win, how he hoped to be back soon. And then Mauch left.

“(The players) just looked at each other,” Wynegar said. “It was so sudden. But for Gene to take the uniform off his back, to not be involved with the team, it had to be something out of his control. That’s what scares me. If it was something he thought he could handle, I’m sure he would have stayed.”

Wynegar and Mauch are close, as close as Mauch allows any player to be to him. But even Wynegar, who also played for Mauch in Minnesota, said he couldn’t approach his friend and manager after the meeting. “I was too emotional,” he said. “I just couldn’t do it.”

There had been rumors in the Angel clubhouse of Mauch’s illness. The persistent cough, they could hear first-hand. But then came word that Mauch was having problems sleeping, that he often felt weary.

Even late last season, as the Angels settled at the bottom of the standings in the American League West, players said they noticed a subtle change in Mauch.

“I made the comment to a couple of players, particularly in the off-season, that something didn’t seem right with him,” Brian Downing said. “I don’t know if he just didn’t feel good, or what, but I felt, especially the way we ended up last year, that he was going to come out with fire in his eyes like he’s well known for. And it just didn’t seem that way to me.”

Mauch’s passion for winning and excellence were still apparent, Downing said, but his temper was not. Missing was the angry lecture or even a bit of clubhouse drama, such as knocking over the postgame food spread.

So when the team assembled Friday morning, Downing said that he expected, as did other players, a return of the Mauch of old--perhaps a little fire and brimstone mixed with a few pointed verbal barbs. Instead, the Angels got news they could have done without.

“I thought he was going to give us a little kick right there,” Downing said.

There was a kick, all right, but certainly not the kind the Angels expected.

Wynegar was numb, and Marcel Lachemann, the team’s pitching coach, couldn’t bring himself to discuss the situation.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he said.

Wally Joyner said he now felt different about his recent contract squabble with the front office, that for varying reasons the news of Mauch’s illness “puts a lot of things in perspective.”

Jack Howell simply said: “He’ll be in my prayers every minute.”

Angel players weren’t the first to hear of Mauch’s decision. Owner Gene Autry and his wife, Jackie, were on their way from Los Angeles to their home in Palm Springs when their car phone rang. It was Mauch.

“(Mauch) said he had been feeling terrible the last few days,” Gene Autry said. “He said it just seemed like he didn’t feel as strong as he should.”

That’s when the decision was made that Mauch should visit the Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage for a thorough physical. Shortly after the phone conversation, Mauch informed the Angels and, later, reporters.

Word of Mauch’s illness and temporary departure from the team spread fast enough--and not always accurately.

Don Drysdale, one of Mauch’s closest friends and now a Dodger broadcaster, learned of the decision not long before leaving for Miami and an exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles on Friday night. But Drysdale was told initially that Mauch had resigned because of illness.

“I was sick,” Drysdale said. “I thought, ‘That can’t be.’ ”

It wasn’t, but the real news wasn’t especially encouraging, either.

“He’s certainly concerned, or he wouldn’t even do it, knowing Gene,” Drysdale said.