Angels Are Winging Right Along : They’re Thinking About Moving Up From Second Place

Anaheim Stadium is a magical place where foul balls can turn into home runs and where old pitchers never die, they just get knocked out in the fifth inning.

The team that plays in this wonderful world of enchantment is the California Angels, and the Angels are 22-13 this season and . . . whoa! As they say in certain Central American countries, recount!

Let’s see, the Angels, the team that finished 29 games behind Oakland last season, came into Saturday’s game against the New York Yankees with a 21-13 record. They beat the Yankees Saturday, 6-1, knocking 45-year-old Tommy John out in the fifth. So sure enough, that would make them 22-13.

This team was 14-21 at this time last year. They had a manager named Cookie, an outfielder named Chili and a long season ahead of them.

Their team batting average this season is actually lower than last--.252 compared with .261--but the pitching has been phenomenal, leading the American League with a 2.64 earned-run average.

All of which has given some of the Angel players pause to consider thoughts unthinkable at the beginning of the season. Thoughts such as how they’re going to catch the Oakland A’s, the first-place team they trail by two games.

“We’re playing good ball right now,” said Chili Davis, Angel left fielder, who went two for four with a run batted in Saturday. “We just have to stick close so that when (Oakland) starts losing, we can do our damage.”

Right now, Oakland is not losing.

“They’re playing great baseball right now,” said Johnny Ray, Angel second baseman, who went one for three with three RBIs.

Davis said: “No one is beating Oakland.”

Then again, not many teams are doing the same to the Angels, who have won 17 of their past 23.

“I figured we’d have a good ball club this year,” Davis said. “It was just a matter of seeing how the clubhouse situation would work out. We had a lot of different players coming in from free agency.”

Davis admits he had his greatest hesitations about the new Angels’ manager, Doug Rader--”You don’t just meet someone, walk up to them and start hugging them, you’ve got to give it time.” He seems convinced now that Rader is the guy for the Angels.

“He’s not saying negative things even when things are going bad,” Davis said. “I think that’s what this team needed.”

This team also needed pitching, which it has gotten so far. Saturday, Mike Witt pitched a five-hit, complete game that would have been a shutout except that a fly ball hit by the Yankees’ Mike Pagliarulo that appeared to clearly land on the wrong side of the foul pole was ruled a home run.

“We want to give other teams the feeling that this pitching staff is not going to allow this team to slump,” Witt said.

Someone asked Davis if he thought Saturday’s game signaled a return to “old-fashioned Angel baseball,” to which Davis replied: “The only Angel baseball I know about is what I saw last year. I hope that’s not old-fashioned Angel baseball. If it is, I hope we don’t play like that again.”