A Stroke of Luck for Angels

It is a quarter to two, Thursday morning on the East Coast, and alongside a lonely stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike, a bus carrying 18 members of the Angels’ traveling party is lying on its side, 300 feet from a mangled guardrail that failed.

Soon, police sirens sound. Ambulances arrive. The bus windshield is smashed in order to extricate the team’s manager, Buck Rodgers, who has suffered a fractured elbow, kneecap and rib.

Around him, traveling secretary Frank Sims has a cracked rib cage.

Bullpen catch Rick Turner and shortstop Gary DiSarcina are bleeding.

First baseman Alvin Davis has bruises on his back.

Batting coach Rod Carew has a stiff neck.

At nearby Underwood Hospital in Woodbury, N.J., spokeswoman Sara Crispin examines the injuries and, imagining what could have been, declares, “It looks like they were very lucky guys.”

Indeed they were.

Angels.

Lucky.

For once.

Back on another coast, the first news of the accident trickled across the bottom of the television screen, across David Letterman’s desk. Just a blurb of a bulletin, in capital white letters: “The California Angels’ bus had overturned on the New Jersey Turnpike. More to follow.”

For many minutes--too many--that was it. In the interim, in a rush, all the darkened images of this fortune-forsaken franchise reappeared.

Staff ace Ken McBride, his budding career ruined by injuries sustained in an automobile accident in 1964.

Relief pitcher Minnie Rojas, paralyzed in a car crash in 1968.

Infielder Chico Ruiz, killed in a wreck in 1972.

Rookie pitcher Bruce Heinbechner, killed in a 1974 accident a half-mile away from the team hotel.

Shortstop Mike Miley, killed in 1977, at the age of 23, in a Louisiana car crash.

Outfielder Lyman Bostock shot to death in Gary, Ind., in 1978.

This time, the lead vehicle in a two-bus convoy from New York to Baltimore had spun out of control, smashed through a guardrail and flipped over, mere feet from a 15-foot embankment leading down to a drainage pond.

“Thank God for the trees,” said Leonard Garcia, the team’s equipment manager.

“I thought we were going into the water,” third base coach John Wathan said. “Then, all of a sudden, we were in the woods. The trees stopped us.”

The trees were the heroes of the hour, but the ranks would quickly swell.

Out of the second bus leaped Chuck Finley, who led a charge to the disabled bus and began pulling teammates out of broken windows.

“All I remember is somebody yelling, ‘The bus is down!’ and Chuck Finley running out of there,” said team publicist Tim Mead, who was seated in the second bus. “Right away, he was grabbing people and taking them back to the second bus for ice and gauze.”

Trainer Ned Bergert was already on the first bus, down and dazed with all the others, but quickly on his feet and tending to the injured--seemingly unaware of the deep bruises in his lower back.

“Ned must’ve been working on adrenaline,” Sims said later from his hospital bed at Underwood. “He didn’t realize he was hurt until he got here. He was walking around and taking care of everybody else first.”

Rodgers sustained the most serious injuries and his elbow will require surgery in Inglewood this weekend. At Thomas Jefferson Memorial Hospital in Philadelphia, where Rodgers was transferred, the Phillies’ team physician, Dr. Phillip Marone, examined the manager and noted, “If he was a player, he’d be out for the season.”

Rodgers needs only to sit up in the dugout, but even that is expected to take awhile. In the meantime, Wathan will be the interim manager and search for interim replacements for Rose and Davis, both possibly bound for the disabled list.

“It felt like we hit a pothole,” Rose said, trying to recall the sensation of sudden impact. “I don’t remember much after that. Either I was knocked out or something hit me on the head.

“When I woke up, Chuck Finley and Jim Abbott and Lee Stevens were pulling me out.”

Senses regained, Rose was later released from the hospital, but before joining his teammates in Baltimore, he inspected the wreckage one more time.

He shook a woozy head.

“We’re all pretty lucky,” he said.

Lost in the woods?

Today, the Angels would say they were saved by them.