Angels Showing Their Age

One month into a new baseball season and all we have are questions . . .

* What’s the deal with the Angels?

They’re up, they’re down, they beat Roger Clemens, they lose to Derek Lilliquist, they sweep the Red Sox, they get swept by the Red Sox, J.T. Snow can’t miss, J.T. Snow can’t hit, the bullpen can’t compensate for the loss of Bryan Harvey and the bullpen can’t compensate for the loss of Bryan Harvey.

Sounds like a young baseball team to me.

The adjective is all-inclusive when it comes to the Angels. It says all you need to know about them.

Young equals enthusiastic.

Young equals fresh.

Young equals inexperienced.

Young equals underpaid.

Yes, the Angels are playing hard. They have six starters in their first or second seasons, each making the major league minimum or close to it; they ought to play hard. Consider their options: Stop running and the plane to Vancouver leaves tomorrow. Keep running and that $109,000 salary could double or triple by ’94.

As Barry Bonds showed all, the journey to the $44 million payday begins with many small steps, taken very quickly together.

* Suppose the Angels keep running all summer. How far will that take them?

The ’92 Angels were four games over .500 on May 9 and went on to finish 72-90, and that team had Harvey and Jim Abbott, so as longshot bets go, these Angels, on May 5, are neck-and-neck with Rockamundo.

These Angels can field. There’s not a hack in the bunch--and who says you can’t teach old Polonias new tricks? That should keep them in more games than last year, but where’s the No. 3 starter and, as Albert Belle asked Monday night, where’s the bullpen stopper? In New York and Florida? Well, yeah, a lot of good that does the Angels now.

Harvey and Abbott might have given this windmill tilt a real go, but with the Snow/Salmon/Curtis-driven offense learning on the job, there isn’t enough pitching to buy the kids enough time.

So enjoy it while it lasts. Now that Chicago and Texas have wiped the sleep from their eyes, it shouldn’t be long now.

But a .500 season is something to shoot for, something within reason and reach. Be there in October, pay for some pitching in December--I know, I’m a dreamer--and maybe next year, one 13-5 spurt will deserve a few others.

* If pitching is 90% of the game, how do you explain the Detroit Tigers?

You don’t. You just buy a bleacher seat and collect the free baseballs as they come.

Whatever Sparky Anderson is doing in Detroit is marvelous, but it isn’t baseball. High-level, slo-pitch softball, perhaps, sponsored by Little Caesar’s Pizza, with Cecil Fielder, Rob Deer, Mickey Tettleton and Travis Fryman flexing beer-powered biceps and pounding out scores of 20-6.

For those who feared that Rotisserie would one day swallow the sport whole, fear no more.

The day is here.

* And what about the National League leaders? The Phillies and the Giants? Since when did newspapers start printing the standings upside-down?

Atlanta and Minnesota, consider what you have wrought.

Go worst-to-first once, do it twice--now everybody thinks they can do it.

Of Tuesday’s four division leaders, three--the Angels, the Phillies and the Giants--lost at least 90 games in 1992. The fourth, Detroit, went 75-87.

Actually, this can be explained.

In San Francisco, the Giants have Barry Bonds, who has been known to have months like this. Last year, without Bobby Bonilla and John Smiley, Bonds carried the Pirates to within a inch of the pennant. This year, with Will Clark and Matt Williams, he has a better supporting cast and, with Atlanta yawning through its second April in a row, first place in early May is not an outrageous place for the Giants to be.

In Philadelphia, the Phillies are so schizo, they can place just about anywhere. First, last--nothing is too big a stretch for The Menagerie. Keep Lenny Dykstra, John Kruk, Mitch Williams and Dave Hollins interested long enough and they are capable of blowing away a division that includes, as challengers, Montreal (not enough pitching), St. Louis (not enough power), Pittsburgh (not enough ’92 Pirates) and New York (not enough gray matter).

* What’s the deal with the Dodgers?

They added Jody Reed and Tim Wallach, they rehabilitated Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis, they promoted Mike Piazza and Pedro Astacio--and they’re off to a worse start than last year, which was their worst year ever.

Now, Tommy Lasorda has replaced Randy Pfund as Most Endangered Leader of Men in the Greater Los Angeles Area and the Dodgers have replaced the Colorado Rockies as the team to beat--as many have--in the NL West.

With Strawberry clutching his back again, the Dodgers are suddenly looking like the anti-Angels--old and tired, too feeble and infirm to pick themselves off the mat.

The best thing that can be said for them is the same three-word catch phrase currently curtailing epidemics of pennant fever in Anaheim, Detroit and San Francisco.

It’s only May.