COMMENTARY : Witt Never Welcomed a Hero’s Welcome

What once was Wally’s world and Jim Abbott’s stage and Bert Blyleven’s playhouse could have belonged, so easily, to the man just leaving town.

Mike Witt was more than just another local boy who made good. He was the local boy who made perfect. Born in Fullerton and raised in Buena Park, Witt attended Servite High in Anaheim, where he went 14-0 his senior season and pitched the Friars to the 1978 CIF 4-A championship at Anaheim Stadium, on the same mound where he would make his major league debut three years later.

Three years after that, Witt debuted in the record book. He pitched to 27 Texas Rangers on the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1984. None reached base.

It was the first perfect game in Angel history and only the 13th perfect game in big-league history. Witt was 24 and a 15-game winner for the first time. His arrival as a pitcher had been announced.

Old-timers compared him to Don Drysdale.

Gene Autry compared him to Nolan Ryan.

Reggie Jackson took a look at his curveball, a pitch that was more champagne-and-caviar than bread-and-butter, and christened it The Mercedes Bends.

Witt could have had it all. Or at least in Anaheim. The keys to the city? Witt was the key to the city. He could have been the Angels’ Fernando Valenzuela.

But when Witt looked at Fernando, all he saw was the mania. He saw the media throngs, the crush of the fans, the daily hassle, the extra public-relations effort that was required.

He wanted none of it.

In May of 1985, Buena Park attempted to honor Witt for his perfect game. The mayor and several councilmen arrived at Anaheim Stadium to present Witt with two plaques, a scrapbook and various congratulatory letters before an Angel home game.

Witt gritted his teeth through the ceremony. “I’m not much for this kind of this thing,” Witt told reporters that day. “If I had my druthers, we wouldn’t be doing it at all. . . . This has everything to do with the city of Buena Park. I don’t think I should be treated differently just because I happen to be from around here.

“Hopefully, this will be the last time this happens, so I won’t have to go around saying stuff like this.”

Witt pitched on a small slope of dirt, which always seemed to disappoint him. His preference was a vacuum. As a team, the Angels never have been writer-friendly, but Witt was contemptuous of the media at an early age. He resented the intrusion and the questions he deemed idiotic. Although Witt loosened up in later years, his locker was usually the coldest corner in the Angel clubhouse.

The last home game of the 1986 season, Witt received the Owner’s Trophy, given annually to the Angels’ most valuable player. Witt used the occasion to thumb his nose at the media.

“Maybe I’ve been waiting five years for this,” Witt said. “So you guys can come to me and get nothing. . . . I hope you’re frustrated.”

Witt was shaped and hardened by his first few seasons with the Angels. Touted as a can’t-miss prospect, he misfired often early on in his career, going 8-9 in 1981, 8-6 in 1982 and 7-14 in 1983. He drained the patience of his first Angel pitching coach, Tom Morgan, whose criticisms were recorded in the daily newspapers.

Witt grew to hate newspapers.

He also grew up as a major leaguer in a hostile environment. Breaking in during the 1981 season, Witt beat the Angel youth movement by a good three years, leaving him isolated on a club dominated by veterans more than 10 years his senior. He had no immediate peer group. Out of necessity, he became a loner, sealing himself behind a protective wall.

Once, in a reflective mood, Witt told of how he had sat in the clubhouse between Bruce Kison and Rod Carew, two of the surliest Angels, and how they’d tell the kid to steer clear of this writer and to ignore that one. Witt was impressionable then--and this was his first impression of big-league life.

As the Angel pitching staff began to turn over, with Kirk McCaskill, Chuck Finley and Willie Fraser becoming colleagues and contemporaries, Witt finally began to enjoy the life. McCaskill, in particular, became a close friend, and his gregariousness helped bring out a different side in Witt, one that included a smile.

Still, Witt seldom reveals his honest emotions to anyone holding a notepad, so we never may know how he truly felt about the most infamous pitching change in Angel history--Gene Mauch’s removal of him in Game 5 of the 1986 playoffs.

We suspect Witt feels the same way as the streams of jilted fans who filed out of Anaheim Stadium that dreary day: That Witt, buoyed by the adrenaline of the moment, would have reared back and struck out Rich Gedman and put the Angels in the World Series.

No Gary Lucas, no Donnie Moore, no Dave Henderson.

Witt was never really the same after that game. From 1986 to 1987, he went from 18-10 and 2.84 to 16-14 and 4.01--never to finish another Angel season with an earned-run average under four. The demands of that summer--269 innings, 14 complete games--also took their toll, as evidenced by Witt’s dwindling victory totals and speed-gun scores ever since.

Witt’s last shining moment as an Angel came on April 11, 1990, when he ran anchor leg on the Angels’ no-hit relay team. A starter no more, Witt finished what Mark Langston had begun and once he did, he had to wade through the irony to get to his locker stall.

Langston had replaced Witt in the Angels’ rotation, and the no-hitter Witt saved was the Angels’ first since that perfect afternoon in Arlington, Tex.

“I guess I’m a hero for a night,” Witt said with typical sarcasm.

He could have held the title so much longer. But a hero’s welcome requires a hero who welcomes the effort, the reaching out and opening up that traditionally comes with the territory. With the Angels, Mike Witt never did.