1st Home Game’s a Hit : Angel Fans Pour Through Big A Turnstiles and Relish Their Day in the Sun

Deep, deep, waay back in the center field seats sat Lee Pierce, and he was feeling good. With his shirt off, dark shades on and his feet propped on the empty seat in front of him, Pierce looked as if he might be napping in the brilliant afternoon sun.

Then he took a sip of his beer, and you knew he was indeed awake and watching the game down there on the velvety grass of Anaheim Stadium.

“Ah’m from Houston--well, Bay City, really--and back there you don’t have this kind of thing,” the 21-year-old Pierce, a Navy man stationed at the El Toro Marine Corps base, said in a slow Texas drawl.

‘This Here Is Great’

“You’ve got to watch all the games there in the Astrodome, you know, inside, where they’ve got air conditioning. This here is great.”

On the other side of the vast stadium, 4-year-old Austin Sherer thought the goings-on were pretty great, too.

The California Angels had a man on third, and the electronic scoreboard high above home plate was urging the crowd of 41,511 to clap. Many were, to the delight of Austin, who joined in but couldn’t make much noise because he had his tiny baseball glove on his left hand, ready to catch any foul balls that came his way.

“We’ve been bringing him since he was 18 months old,” said his father, Tom Sherer, in whose lap Austin was sitting. The Sherer family recently moved from Orange County to Temecula, but they still plan to make the pilgrimage to the Big A to see baseball games, Tom Sherer said.

And Austin’s 18-month-old sister, Ashley, was getting the same introduction to America’s national pastime, two seats over in Mom’s lap.

“Last year she was a little too restless, but I think she’ll be OK this year,” Cindy Sherer said. “Austin, he already knows everybody on the team. He loves it.”

Sunday’s exhibition game against the Los Angeles Dodgers was the first of at least 82 home games that will keep Angels fans occupied through the first week in October. As they filed through the turnstiles at Gate 2 for the start of a new season, many fans stopped in front of three window cases that constitute the Angels Hall of Fame and recalled campaigns and players past.

There were sparkling white jerseys that once adorned the huge shoulders of sluggers Don Baylor and Reggie Jackson; a timeless Louisville Slugger that belonged to 1970 American League batting champion Alex Johnson, and a white base inscribed with the date of Rod Carew’s 3,000th career hit on Aug. 4, 1985, in a game against Minnesota.

“I was there that day. You remember who he hit it off?” said one man in the crowd to another.

“Oh, some pitcher, I guess,” the man replied.

‘We’ve Just Been Waiting’

Rick Dominguez and his son, Flavio, stood in front of a case dedicated to Bobby Grich, the gritty, popular second baseman who retired at the end of the 1986 season after nearly a decade at the position.

“We’ve just been waiting for the season to start,” said Rick Dominguez of Huntington Beach. “We go to other sports--wrestling, the Lakers--but we have season tickets here. I’ve been to every opening game since they came out here. . . . With the new manager, maybe we can get something going.”

Sitting high above first base, Eugene McNellis was of similar mind.

“The Little General (former manager Gene Mauch) was just that--a general,” said McNellis, a World War II veteran who lives in Long Beach. “Cookie Rojas (the new Angels manager) will probably have them relaxed more. Our hitting is good and our defense is good, but our pitching, too much is suspect there. We had too many operations.”

With his Angels ring, cap and shirt, McNellis could hardly be mistaken for one of the thousands of Dodgers faithful who crossed the Orange curtain and infiltrated the Big A.

Not so for Cypress residents Robert and Cheryl Sosa, whose homemade half Dodger-half Angel caps confused everyone around them. “They’re our Freeway Series caps,” said Cheryl Sosa, a Cal State Long Beach student. “You think I can make any money with them?”

Robert Sosa, a mailman, explained that he was born in Los Angeles but raised in Orange County and that he and his wife cheer for both teams. “I’m basically an Angel fan, and today we’ll be cheering for the Angels, since it’s their stadium.”

Down on the field box level, Dodgers fan Luis Romero of Orange was giving his green baseball cap--the industrial variety--special attention after Dodgers first baseman Mike Marshall sailed a throw over catcher Mike Scioscia’s head, converting an easy out into a gift run for the Angels. Romero pulled off his hat in disgust, threw it on the ground and stomped on it.

“All the time, that’s the problem with the Dodgers,” said Romero in Spanish. “Too many errors. It’s been that way for the last three years.”

While Romero and the other Dodgers fans moaned and groaned through their team’s anemic performance (they lost 6-1), Angel Booster Club board member Bobbi Barry of Anaheim kept on her head the battery-operated clock-hat that she got as a Christmas present but saved to wear at Sunday’s game.

Its hands were correctly set to daylight-saving time, and it carried the message of the day: “Time for Baseball.”