COMMENTARY : Angel Laughter Soothes Wounds

Some bodies have been battered, some bones have been broken, but the Angels, giddy over the fact that their bus detour through a New Jersey thicket produced nothing worse, returned to the diamond Friday night wearing their emotions on their sleeves.

And, soon to follow: On their chests.

“We’re going to have some T-shirts made,” said Angel radio broadcaster Al Conin, still sporting a purple shiner from his Thursday morning encounter with a bus seat. “They’re going to say, ‘I Survived I-95.’ ”

It is quite a claim, considering that the bus intended to carry Conin and 17 others from New York to Baltimore now resembles an aluminum accordion. But then, so was the actual occurrence of Friday’s game between the Angels and the Baltimore Orioles, less than 48 hours after half a baseball team was tossed around a bus interior like sweat socks during spin cycle.

“A miracle,” trainer Rick Smith said. “An absolute miracle.”

“Just for this team to take the field tonight, something should be said for that,” pitcher Chuck Finley said. “Considering what happened the other night, just to have enough guys to put on the field is enough for me.”

The message was lost on no one wearing a halo on his forehead. Smith saw to that. After leading the team in pre-batting practice exercises, Smith, as he does before every game, gathered the players around him to deliver his Quote of the Day.

“Thankfulness and gratitude,” Smith told them. “I think those are the two pertinent thoughts for today.”

A few minutes later, John Wathan, the club’s interim manager while Buck Rodgers is prepped for surgery on his broken right elbow and left knee, is sitting in the visitors’ dugout when he is approached by a writer, who shakes Wathan’s hand and says, by way of introduction, “Good to see you.”

Wathan was on the bus that crashed, seated only two rows behind Rodgers.

Wathan smiled.

“That’s the nicest thing you could possibly say to me,” he replied.

Humor was the official salve of the Angels Friday night. Ken Macha, the bullpen coach who was seated across the bus aisle from Wathan, talked about the nurse at Underwood Memorial Hospital who asked him for his identification.

“I pulled out my wallet and there was glass inside of it,” he said. “Too bad those windows weren’t made of money.”

Conin, whose injuries were limited to a blackened eye and a bruised knee, laughed as he recalled the fuss that was made over him by the hospital staff.

“For some reason, they seemed to think my injuries were worse than they were,” Conin said. “I was feeling fine, but a paramedic pointed at me and said, ‘There’s red stuff all over your knee!’ and clipped my pants leg off. All there was was a scratch.

“Then a nurse looked at me and said, ‘Oh my God, take off your shirt!’ I did and it was red all over.”

Conin wasn’t bleeding. He pulled the shirt to his nose.

“Pizza sauce,” he said. “We were having pizza and chicken on the bus and I landed right in it, on the second seat on the left. I had pizza sauce all over me.”

Finley, lauded by teammates for heroism above and beyond the call of duty by leading the rescue brigade from the second bus, intercepted the praise with a drawled: “Some of the guys had bought some pretty nice CD players in New York. I just wanted to get everybody off the bus and get their stuff.”

And then there was this from first baseman Lee Stevens, after being asked how he was feeling:

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.”

Well, if insides count, yes, he certainly was.

“You’ve got to try to laugh,” Conin reasoned. “It’s the only thing that keeps you from crying.”

“Good therapy,” rookie shortstop Gary DiSarcina said of Friday night’s game in Baltimore. “I kept thinking to myself out there, ‘Geez, I’m right in the middle of a game. . . . Hey, Buck’s injuries very well could’ve been mine.’

“I’m at the point now where I don’t take anything for granted. This could have been taken away from me in two seconds. I think we’re all going to enjoy this more, especially the older guys. They want to enjoy this now as much as they can.”

Conin, meanwhile, wanted to know why the media ranks had swelled twice its normal size.

“We’re 1-5,” he exclaimed. “We’ve gone off track before and never got this kind of coverage.”

If you’re an Angel, it only hurts if you don’t laugh.