Tragedies Leave Some Believing in Angel Curse

“Late Night With David Letterman” was never a bigger bomb. The laughter fizzled a few minutes after midnight, just as soon as the stark white type began to crawl across the bottom of the television screen.

THE CALIFORNIA ANGELS’ . . .

. . . TEAM BUS . . .

. . . HAS OVERTURNED . . .

. . . ON THE NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE . . .

MORE TO FOLLOW . . .

More to follow?

That’s it? More to follow?

The mind ran amok, overwhelmed by the drag of time.

Ken McBride.

Not again.

Minnie Rojas.

A bus crash? Buses don’t crash.

Chico Ruiz.

Planes. Planes are dangerous. A plane can go down. But a bus?

Bruce Heinbechner.

What is it with this team? Come on. There is no such thing as a curse.

Mike Miley.

Repeat, there is no such thing as a curse.

Lyman Bostock.

Is there?

Angel team president Richard Brown will never forget the feeling when he first received the news, having been jolted from his sleep by a ringing phone, right about midnight, the morning of May 21, 1992.

“It felt like somebody kicked me in the stomach,” Brown says. “It’s your worst nightmare. You’re thinking a thousand thoughts--’Are the players healthy?’ ‘Was anybody killed?’ ‘How could something like this happen?’ ”

Team publicity director Tim Mead was on the other end, speaking from the scene, speaking on a cellular phone he had borrowed from a passing motorist.

There were no fatalities, Mead told Brown. Buck Rodgers was hurt, hurt badly, and a few others needed hospital treatment, but everyone was alive. Considering the gnarled metal and chrome that had just buzzsawed through a thicket of trees, it seemed a minor miracle.

“Thank God,” Brown said. “We can deal with it from there.”

But could they? Did the 1992 Angels ever truly deal with the bus crash that sent 13 members of their traveling party to Underwood Memorial Hospital in Woodbury, N.J., and cost them their manager for more than three months?

In retrospect, Brown believes they did not.

“The players would never say this,” Brown says. “Nor would Buck. As professional athletes and coaches, they’re just too proud. But the bus crash really impacted the season. I’m not going to say we wouldn’t have lost 90 games, anyway, if it hadn’t happened, but it took away our manager, and we had built that team around Buck. That was the kind of team Buck excels with--young, overachieving, built around speed. . .

“Then, all of a sudden, there’s this traumatic event. The players played as hard as they could, but they’re human beings. Baseball is such a mental game--you can’t expect a human being to go through something like that and not be unaffected. Can a surgeon perform as capably one month after his wife has been seriously injured?

“If the activity requires skill and mental acuity, a person’s just not going to be as sharp.”

The ’92 Angels went 39-50 without Rodgers; they were 33-40 with him. That team was going to lose a lot of games either way--it probably overachieved to win 72 times--but Rodgers is a popular figure in the clubhouse, and that clubhouse often seemed a vacuum while he waited at home for broken bones to mend.

“The players were all concerned about Buck,” Brown says. “He was always on their minds. I visited Buck in the hospital right after the operation. Boy, Skip didn’t look too good. It was frightening. The doctors said the only thing holding his arm together was the skin.”

A year later, the emotional fallout from the accident has dissipated, largely because Rodgers has returned, in good health and humor, and most of the ’92 Angels did not. J.T. Snow, Damion Easley, Tim Salmon, Chili Davis, Scott Sanderson, John Farrell, John Orton, Greg Myers--key Angels today, they were in the minor leagues or different organizations 12 months ago. All they know about the bus crash is word of mouth.

Thankfully, they say, it was before their time.

The boating deaths of two Cleveland Indian pitchers this spring also lent perspective.

“What happened with the Indians,” Brown says, “made me realize we were very, very fortunate. I’m not saying Buck was lucky, because what he went through was frightening, but injuries can be lived with. They can heal. Death is everlasting.”

The Angels know. Much too well. The list of alumni, cut down by vehicular mishap, disease or gunfire, comprises a ghastly roll call.

From Dick Wantz to Donnie Moore, the Angels have been floored so frequently that, in the context of their sorry history, the totaling of a bus is considered a lucky break when no head stones are ordered.

“I don’t think this team is snakebitten,” Brown says, speaking bravely. “There is no dark cloud hanging over the franchise.”

Still, Brown jokes that “I hired a seismologist and he determined that Anaheim Stadium was not built over Indian burial grounds.”

Everything evens out in this life, Brown has tried to convince himself. This is why he believes that “the best part of California Angel history is still in front of us.”

Considering what’s behind them, arguing the point is difficult.