Thrill Isn’t Gone : Jim Abbott Says He Is Excited About His Bittersweet Return to Anaheim, but Insists That He Is Happy in Yankee Pin Stripes

Jim Abbott will return to Anaheim Stadium tonight for the first time since he was traded by the Angels to the New York Yankees on Dec. 9.

He will pitch Wednesday night, knowing there will be a certain ache to what is certain to be an emotional experience.

“Sometimes I still feel a little pain,” he said in Oakland the other day, referring to his departure from the Angels. “That was my first (professional) uniform. I still miss many of the guys. I still miss much about the area, but it’s all behind me.

“I spent a lot of the winter worrying about my adjustment to New York and how I’d fit in with the team and city, but everything has gone so well that I’m confident it’s going to be a great year.”

Unfortunately for Abbott, 7-15 with the Angels last year largely because of poor support, April with the Yankees has been much like his four Aprils with the Angels. He is 1-3 with a 4.13 earned-run average; his career record in the season’s first month is 3-13.

“I try not to let it affect me because I’ll never catch up after those first couple of Aprils I had,” Abbott said. “I mean, it doesn’t affect the way I go about it. I’ve been happy with two of my starts (for the Yankees) and disappointed with the two others.”

Abbott lost his first start at Cleveland, 4-2, in a performance reminiscent of so many of last season’s. The Angels wasted his 2.77 ERA in 1992 by scoring an average of only 2.55 runs in his 29 starts, the poorest support in the 20 years of the designated-hitter era. He rebounded from the Cleveland setback to pitch a complete game, beating the Kansas City Royals in his first start at Yankee Stadium, 4-1, and drawing thunderous approval from a crowd of 56,704.

“That was one of the real highlights of my career,” Abbott said. “It ranks up there with anything I’ve done, including winning the Olympics.”

His last two efforts, however, have been disappointments. He gave up eight hits and six earned runs in 5 2/3 innings of a 9-0 defeat by the Texas Rangers, and nine hits and six runs in a 6-3 defeat by the Seattle Mariners last Friday.

Abbott could not forgive himself after failing to overcome a seventh-inning error and maintain a 3-2 lead in that game. Three of the six runs he gave up were unearned, but be said that he was frustrated by his inability to get some key outs and pick the team up after the error. He said he aspires to be the type of pitcher who can do that.

The Angels traded their most popular pitcher since Nolan Ryan for first baseman J.T. Snow and pitchers Russ Springer and Jerry Nielsen. They had offered Abbott a four-year, $16-million contract, a record for a pitcher with only four years of major league experience, and were unwilling to split a $3-million difference.

They were also unwilling to let Abbott get into his next-to-last season before free agency without a long-term commitment, believing that if they were unable to get that commitment again after his fifth year, he would test the market a year later and they would get only a draft choice as compensation if he left.

When interviewed in Florida in March, Abbott said he had not second-guessed himself for turning down $16 million, that he would have signed if it had only been the money, but that the uncertainty over the club’s direction told him it was time to go. In Oakland, he declined to evaluate the trade.

Springer and Nielsen are in triple A, but Snow’s strong start has helped make the Angels’ direction look like the right one. But neither the Angels nor Yankees are ready to claim they got the best of the trade, although a Yankee coach said the other day that by the end of the season, “Our first baseman (Don Mattingly) will be hitting more than theirs.”

Said Whitey Herzog, the Angels’ vice president: “I’m not worried about satisfaction or who got the best of it. I’ve taken criticism for trading a pitcher who had two years remaining before he became a free agent, but we’d have gotten less after his fifth year and maybe nothing after his sixth.”

Herzog said he still believes that Springer will be a major league starter and is happy, of course, with Snow’s start.

“The Yankees would never have traded him if they didn’t have Don Mattingly,” he said of Snow. “They did what they had to do, and we did what we had to do. I’ve made a lot of trades, some good and some bad. You’re never out to (cheat) the other club. I mean, the best trades are those that help both teams, and this may do that. It’s a shame we can’t have both Abbott and Snow.”

Said Abbott: “I don’t care if Snow hits .400 or Springer wins 20 games or Nielsen saves 35. What can I do about that?”

He said he wishes the Angels well, but feels separated now and that Wednesday’s start will be the “last remaining obstacle” in that regard.

“It’s going to be exciting to pitch in Anaheim again,” he said. “It’s going to be nice to see everyone again. The fans there were great to me, but it’s one game, and I don’t want to make more of it than it is or I won’t be able to do my job. I really want to get it behind me and go on.”

If the admiration of Southern California fans for Abbott could be measured by the stacks of mail that accumulated at his Anaheim Stadium locker, it has been no different after only a few weeks with the Yankees.

“He is already on his way to owning the town,” media relations director Jeff Idelson said. “He received a standing ovation from the time he walked in from the bullpen (to start his first game at Yankee Stadium), and there were still a hundred or so fans waiting a couple of hours after the game to get his autograph, and he signed every one. He seems to thrive on it, but we’ve had to pare it back. It’s not that he’s uncooperative, it’s just that the volume of the requests in New York is so large.”

The Bronx zoo? Manager Buck Showalter said New York doesn’t have a corner on pressure, but that the Yankees looked hard at that aspect of it before making the trade.

“We’re still going through a familiarization period with Jim and he’s still going through a familiarization period with us, but I’m impressed by the way he handles the off-the-field stuff,” Showalter said. “There’s a tendency to look for dents in someone’s armor, but we haven’t found any in Jim’s.”

Said Mattingly: “Everyone talks about New York and the fans, but overcoming what he has (being born without a right hand) and growing up with the circumstances he did, I think he’s better equipped to handle it than a lot of guys.”

Abbott said he has been like a fan, watching how Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Jimmy Key and others he has long admired “go about it behind the scenes.”

He said he didn’t want to compare Anaheim and Yankee stadiums but suggested there is more “passion, presence and identity” accompanying the Yankees as exemplified by the recognition they receive in New York and the derision with which they are greeted on the road.

“I don’t want to get into a comparison because it won’t come off right,” he said. “New York and California are like apples and oranges, and I feel fortunate to have experienced them both. There’s a lot of tradition involved in wearing the Yankee uniform, and I hope to help revive it and build on it.”

Abbott’s Yankee career began unpleasantly before he had even put on the pin stripes. He lost in arbitration and was awarded $2.35 million rather than the $3.5 million he was seeking. It was unnerving hearing attorneys for his new club tear him down, but he regarded it more as a lingering chapter in his contract dealings with the Angels, and he has now closed the book on that.

Abbott said he remains receptive to a multiyear proposition the Yankees said they would offer in the spring, but he has yet to receive that offer and at this point doesn’t want anything to interfere with the season.

He and his wife, Dana, still have a residence in Newport Beach, as well as an apartment in Manhattan.

“We walk out the front door to breakfast, to dinner, to the museums,” he said. “I’m nine minutes from Yankee Stadium by cab. It’s a lot different from having to jump on the 55 or 405 (freeways). It’s great, exciting. I haven’t had a bad meal yet. I’m liable to get fat.”

In the long run, Abbott hopes that it’s his victory total that becomes bloated. He nods toward a clubhouse of proven hitters, as if to say he still believes there’s a better chance it will happen in New York.