BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : How Long Will This Plan Last ?

The Angels have won three division titles in 30-plus seasons and employed six general managers and 14 managers, counting Gene Mauch twice.

That’s an average of one division title, two general managers and 4.6 managers a decade.

It adds up to a portrait of indecisive leadership and uncertain philosophy.

It suggests an organization that has trouble with one-year plans, let alone a five-year plan.

The overriding theme of win one for the cowboy, owner Gene Autry, keeps getting in the way, and the cowboy has never stepped up to the bar and said, “Boys, this is where we’re going and this is how we’ll get there.”

“I think the good intentions in the past were often derailed before the agreed-upon philosophy was fulfilled,” club President Richard Brown said after the smoke from his firing of General Manager Mike Port had cleared.

Now? Who knows. Some may say that Port’s firing is merely another brush stroke on the portrait.

“I’m never concerned with what other people think when I know I’m right and know I have a plan,” Brown said.

The plan? Producing an exciting team that will get Autry to the World Series while maintaining economic viability through an emphasis on the farm system.

Has that been heard before? As sure as Anaheim is the home of Fantasyland.

Will the good intentions be derailed again by Amtrak dropping off another free agent, another name for the Big A marquee?

Well, Brown insists he has asked Bill Bavasi and Bob Fontaine, the farm and scouting directors, respectively, to evaluate their departments. It is possible that budgets will be increased, more scouts hired in the wake of critical defections when Larry Himes left as the Angels’ scouting director to become the general manager of the Chicago White Sox.

“If you believe in people and give them the responsibility, you have to accept their recommendations,” Brown said.

Brown gave Port exactly six months after becoming president last winter and saying he would make no changes for six months.

Port couldn’t have been surprised by the firing, since his contract expired in October and he wasn’t given a new one when Brown took over. He worked from paycheck to paycheck and Brown said in reflection that Port simply wasn’t putting enough emphasis on development, wasn’t coming to grips with his problems of communication.

“I didn’t walk in and say, ‘This is the problem, you’re fired,’ ” Brown said. “We discussed it at least five times. Mike was improving, but I would have never reached the point of total comfort. It wasn’t a power struggle, as I read somewhere. A power struggle is when you have two people fighting over control. That wasn’t what happened.”

The stoic Port, who never allowed his fine sense of humor and irony to shine through, would make a valuable addition to a National League expansion team as it gets organized.

He leaves a power alliance of Brown and Manager Doug Rader. Dan O’Brien may remain as general manager, but there is a thought that Rader may eventually move into that role. He got the two-year contract and emphasis on development he wanted, and the organization seems to be moving in the direction he urged.

There’s no other course, really. The publication Baseball America recently listed the top 100 minor league prospects and it included only two Angels: pitcher Kyle Abbott and outfielder Tim Salmon.

The Angels have dealt off dozens in the futile quest for the cowboy’s pennant. If it doesn’t happen this year, with Dave Winfield and Dave Parker, both 39, and Gary Gaetti, 32, what happens next year and beyond?

The refusal of Gene and Jackie Autry, his wife, to comment on the firing of Port is clear indication that they now want everything channeled through Brown, that he has the authority.

But at some point in the franchise’s existence it has to be acknowledged that the buck reaches the owner. He is the endearing fan’s fan, but his benign refusal to plot a course and stay with it, his often ill-advised benevolence, has been as destabilizing as the bombast of George Steinbrenner.

Yes, Gene Autry and his Angels have been plagued by misfortune, but it is the owner’s mismanagement that has been most harmful.

LIFE BEGINS AT . . .

Well, it didn’t begin for Nolan Ryan at 40, but it has definitely taken on new vigor.

Now 44, Ryan has pitched two no-hitters, notched his 5,000th strikeout and 300th victory, and lowered his walk ratio while increasing his strikeout ratio since turning 40.

His pre-40 winning percentage and earned-run average of .528 and 3.15 are about the same as his post-40 marks of .520 and 3.22, but his strikeout and walk ratios are remarkable.

Ryan has increased his pre-40 strikeout ratio from 9.4 per nine innings to 10.7, and lowered his walk ratio from five to 3.5.

He is in his own world, of course, with seven no-hitters, but what do they really mean?

Fifty-nine no-hit pitchers ended their careers with losing records. Bill Dean, a historian at the Hall of Fame, mulled it over the other day and said:

“There have been a lot of mediocre pitchers throw one, maybe two, no-hitters. Once beyond that you’re in the elite.

“Throw seven and you’ve transcended random chance.”

RELIEF CALL

“Captain Hook is back,” exclaimed Detroit Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson, who didn’t mean that “Peter Pan” was being re-released.

He simply meant that he is employing the Tiger pitching staff as he did in his early years with Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine, not hesitating to use the bullpen, the staff’s strength.

“I’m back to using all 10 pitchers,” he said. “Captain Hook is very strong again.”

It began last year when Detroit’s starters threw fewer innings than any group in baseball. Then Jack Morris left as a free agent and Jeff Robinson was traded. Morris and Robinson had contributed 43% of the starters’ meager total.

Detroit’s current rotation of Bill Gullickson, Frank Tanana, Walt Terrell, Dan Petry and Steve Searcy is averaging slightly more than five innings a start, with a strikeout high of five in one game by Terrell.

Before a weekend series with the Texas Rangers, the Tigers were the only major league team whose relievers had won more games than the starters. The Tiger bullpen was 6-2 with seven saves. The starters were 5-7. Mike Henneman and Paul Gibson, who had allowed only two earned runs in a combined 30 innings, were shouldering most of the bullpen’s load.

“If we can catch all the breaks we can threat(en),” the inimitable Anderson said of the Tigers’ emergence as a possible contender in the underwhelming American League East.

Detroit’s chances were once thought to depend on how often that mag-whiff-icent lineup of Cecil Fielder, Rob Deer, Pete Incaviglia and Mickey Tettleton made contact, but now the durability of Henneman and his bullpen colleagues may be the key.

GIANT PROBLEMS

The San Francisco Giants would probably settle for Detroit’s suspect rotation.

Last year, injuries and ineffectiveness forced the Giants to use 26 pitchers, one short of the major league record, and 14 starters, one short of the franchise record, set in 1989.

There is fear that the ’91 Giants are on a similar course and some Bay Area pundits have already written them off, despite that imposing lineup.

Manager Roger Craig admitted that he, too, is concerned.

“It’s the pitching that worries me, and I knew going in we would have problems,” he said. “Right now we don’t have any consistency from anyone. We don’t have that big stopper, the one guy who can stop a long losing streak.”

The Giants began a weekend series in New York with opponents hitting .273 against them. They had lost seven of their last nine in a span during which the starters averaged fewer than five innings a start and had an 8.12 ERA.

The season ERA was 4.62, Scott Garrelts and Rick Reuschel were on the disabled list, Don Robinson and his fragile knees were back in the rotation, and Craig was out of alternatives and forced to keep using Mike LaCoss and his 7.71 ERA.

Bud Black, whose free-agent signing for $10 million was widely criticized, carried a 5.09 ERA into New York, and Dave Righetti, who also got a $10-million contract, had only one save because the starters hadn’t been able to get him a lead.

Said club President Al Rosen: “We do not have a great pitcher on this staff. We do have fellows who are very capable of being four or five games over .500, but right now we’re not even getting that.”

The Giants insist they have no interest in Fernando Valenzuela, but that could change before their current problems do.