Fernandomania Gets Change of Venue : Analysis: Up to their old tricks, the Angels added some age and hope to add to their sagging attendance.

Fernando Valenzuela is not as young as he used to be, and probably not as young as he claims to be, which is somewhere in the ballpark of 30 years, give or take a wink.

His pitching arm is no longer capable of wondrous things, of unleashing its trademark brand of mania in the stands, having given the Dodgers the best years of its life.

His won-lost record is 42-48 since 1987.

His earned-run average is 4.05 since 1987.

His last competitive outing of baseball came in late March.

His name is still Fernando Valenzuela.

He knew he had the Angels right where he wanted them.

Angels say no? Not in our lifetime. General managers come, general managers go, CEOs are hired, Mike Ports are fired and the song remains the same.

If you used to be somebody, and you’re not quite ready to become a nobody, get your body, quick, to Anaheim.

That was the career move Fernando made Monday, not much of a transition as far as the lettering goes. From the Dodgers to the Codgers.

Finally, he was old enough.

The Angels never met a marquee name they didn’t like, valuable knowledge for Fernando to have. So he was unwanted by the Dodgers and seemingly the rest of baseball. So? Time was on Fernando’s side. All he had to do was wait the Angels out, checking for the first sound of knees buckling down the freeway.

The Angels got as far as the third week of May. At 20-17, 2 1/2 games behind first-place Oakland, with rookie Scott Lewis faltering in the rotation and home attendance down 91,000 from last season, the Angels could resist no more.

“I think we’re very close,” CEO Richard Brown said Monday. “I think we can win it. This is the best shot we’ve had in a long while.

“Everything is in place, (but) if we have a problem area, we want to address it before it’s too late. In the past, we’ve been guilty of addressing weaknesses too late, or not at all.”

On the field, the Angels have detected a weakness in the last leg of the starting rotation, in young Lewis, who is 1-4 with a 6.21 ERA after seven starts. Lewis is only 25. Perhaps he feels out of place.

In the seats, the numbers are also less than the Angels desire, and Fernando’s signature on an Angel contract has PR written all over it. A couple of starts, a couple of sellouts and Project Fernando nearly pays for itself, right?.

“If his name was Fernando O’Brien, we still would have gone after him,” Brown insists. “When we look for a ballplayer, it’s absolutely essential that we feel he can contribute to bringing this team a pennant.

“The fact that he’s popular and we have have a substantial Hispanic community that identify with Fernando is a very pleasant byproduct. It’s wonderful, but it’s certainly not the only reason we signed him.”

Fernando will attract a crowd, and not only in the Anaheim Stadium view level. If and when he survives his three-game minor-league tryout, Fernando will give the Angels four left-handed pitchers in a five-man pitching rotation. The Angel staff sounds like it should be playing the Roxy instead of Fenway: Kirk McCaskill and The Four Southpaws.

“It’s unorthodox,” Angel general manager Dan O’Brien concedes. “Unorthodox as hell. But I have no problem with it. When I was with Cleveland, we had Doug Jones, who throws right but was always more effective against left-handers. Some pitchers are like that. Fernando is.”

Brown picks up on the same theme and runs a little more with it.

“With Fernando, it’s really like have 3 1/2 left-handers, rather than four,” Brown says. “He acts like a right-hander because he throws a screwball, which breaks the opposite way. You know, a few ballparks could give us some trouble, one of them being Fenway. But if they’re all good, I’ll take five left-handers in my rotation.”

Sandy Koufax, reportedly, is still available.

The Angels insist the risk is minimal, since their agreement with Fernando hinges on the three-start tryout. If the Angels don’t like what they see, they walk away, no strings attached. “Once again, we’re not talking about today,” O’Brien says. “We’re talking about two weeks from now. A lot can happen in that period of time.”

Frankly, the Angels have no idea how much of Fernando they’re getting. Fernando’s agent, Tony DeMarco, claims Fernando has been pitching simulated games every five days, but the Angels haven’t scouted one of them. In the past two months, they’ve seen as much of Fernando as the Dodgers have. “I think Preston Gomez said he saw him talking on ESPN one time,” O’Brien said.

Then, summarizing Angel philosophy, now and forever, O’Brien mused, “At one time, he was something special. Hopefully, it can turn out that way again.”

For wishful thinking, that’s wishing a lot. The Angels aren’t going to buy Fernandomania, but they’d settle for an incredible simulation.