Full Circle : Langston’s Frustration Turns to Happiness Again

Mark Langston, still groggy from a cross-country flight and a restless night of listening to the crying of his 6-week-old daughter, wasn’t quite sure he heard correctly.

Starting? They wanted him to be the American League’s starting pitcher in tonight’s All-Star game?

Langston suddenly became lightheaded, his mind journeying through his career, crashing into that evening of Dec. 6, 1992.

He remembers being summoned to the telephone. He spoke for only a few minutes, but talked in such somber, hushed tones that his wife, Michelle, worried that there was a family emergency.

Langston put down the receiver and cried out: “They did it! They traded Jimmy! Oh, no, can you believe they traded Jimmy?”

The Angels had just traded starter Jim Abbott. Langston’s best friend on the team, Abbott, was going to the New York Yankees. And Langston had never even heard of the three players they were getting in return.

The phone kept ringing all night--friends, teammates, relatives offering condolences, as if there had been a death in the family.

Langston’s hurt soon turned to anger. By the end of the evening, he was telling anyone who would listen that the Angels no longer deserved to be in the major leagues.

“We’ll have trouble matching up with the Albuquerque Dukes,” he said, surprising himself with the anger in his voice.

Soon, the telephone was ringing in agent Arn Tellem’s office. Langston was on the line with simple instructions.

“Get me the out of here!” he said. “Now!”

It wasn’t just that the Angels had dumped Abbott because of their failure to sign him to a four-year deal. A month earlier, they had unloaded bullpen stopper Bryan Harvey in the expansion draft.

Suddenly, Langston didn’t care about the family’s luxurious home in Anaheim Hills, or the proximity to his parents and relatives in the area.

This was about winning, and Langston knew there wasn’t going to any of that happening in Anaheim.

“I was looking back to what we had just 1 1/2 years ago,” said Langston, remembering the team that had Wally Joyner, Kirk McCaskill and Dave Winfield, among others. “To totally dismantle that nucleus was frustrating. We had a lot of talented people here, and now they were gone.

“My point was that you have to do everything you can to win, and I didn’t see us doing that.”

Who could have imagined that seven months later, Langston would be starting the All-Star game, wearing an Angel uniform, no less, and wondering if he ever has been happier in his professional baseball career?

“This is a dream come true,” he said. “It’s a thrill just to participate, but to be the starting pitcher is every little kid’s dream. . . .

“Really, this whole year has been like one long, beautiful dream.”

And that certainly is nothing like what Langston had envisioned.

Even the Angels’ coaching staff had privately worried at times last spring whether the club would finish with a better record than the new Colorado Rockies or Florida Marlins. And here they are, an honest-to-goodness contender in the American League West.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” Langston said. “Nobody in this room would have believed it. Geez, was I ever wrong about this team.”

The Angels’ success has allowed Langston to enjoy himself more than at any time in his career. He is 9-3 with a 2.82 earned-run average but forget the personal triumphs, he said. He finally is on a team that’s playing the game the way it was designed.

Sure, there have been frustrating times. The bullpen has struggled most of the year, blowing five of eight save opportunities in games Langston has pitched. And no one has come close to replacing Harvey.

“I told (teammate) Chuck Finley before I left that I’d try to stick Bryan Harvey in my suitcase before I come back,” Langston said.

Still, the anger and hostility are gone. The Angels are only two games out of first place, and considering that their youth movement has exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations, Langston now thanks Whitey Herzog, vice president in charge of player personnel, for not trading him.

“Ahh, I wasn’t going to trade him anyway,” Herzog said. “We knew he was frustrated. And to be honest, I couldn’t blame him. You just don’t trade away a guy with his talent.”

Langston, one of only three major leaguers who has pitched at least 223 innings in each of the last seven years, says he was able to recover from the trauma before spring training began.

“I think we all heard during the winter how upset Mark was with some of the things going on,” Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina said. “But I remember checking him out the first day of spring, and he was fine. Really, he was the same old Mark. If anything, I think he was more intense, just to prove people wrong about this team. Mark doesn’t want to be associated with losers, and he wasn’t going to let us become one.”

Said Finley: “We all felt bad about losing Abby and Harv, but you got to know how close he and Abby were. I mean, their wives were even best of friends. They did everything together.

“When we lost those guys, Mark was thinking back to his days in Seattle, like, ‘Here we go again.’ He went through enough bad times in Seattle, and he really wanted to be a winner again.”

Langston spent the first 5 1/2 years of his major league career laboring for the Mariners. Although he quickly established himself as one of the finest left-handed starters in the game, he was on a team mired in mediocrity.

“In Seattle, the effort just wasn’t there and that was frustrating,” he said. “We’d be 30 games out, and there were guys who would just give up. I still thought I’d finish my career there, but when I got traded to Montreal, it opened my eyes.”

The Mariners, giving up hope of signing Langston in his free-agent year, traded him to the Expos on May 25, 1989. He quickly learned what it was like to be in a division race.

“That was the greatest fun I’ve ever had up until this year,” Langston said. “To come to the ballpark every day, believing you’re going to win, knowing that every game is so critical for the division--that’s what it’s all about.

“The toughest thing I’ve ever been through in my life is when we didn’t win it. But still, to be in that chase was something I’ll never forget.”

It is why Langston chose the Angels, who were coming off a 91-71 season, when he signed a five-year, $16-million contract in 1989. He was convinced that the Angels were committed to winning, that he would have his best opportunity of reaching the playoffs with them.

That explains his bitterness, agent Arn Tellem says. Langston’s dream, apparently, was disintegrating before his eyes.

“It’s funny,” Langston said. “I play in this game and I made the same mistake as the fans and media. I was looking at this team on paper, instead of seeing what they could do on the field. I totally misjudged them.

“I didn’t realize these guys would play hard every night, show teams that they’re not intimidated by anybody, and just play the game like it’s supposed to be played.

“I can say (now) I’m proud to be part of this organization.”

Considering that three years ago, his first choice as a free agent was to play for the San Diego Padres, he also feels blessed. The Padres are peddling their stars with greater abandon than the Angels ever thought about.

Said Angel Manager Buck Rodgers: “The one thing you always hear him saying now is, ‘Thank God I didn’t go to San Diego.’ ”

Yes, Langston says laughing, it could have been worse. Much worse.