Leaving the Show Stuns Snow : Angels: Even with .188 average and five homers since May 1, rookie didn’t expect to be sent down.

The small basketball hoop tacked up between the lockers of J.T. Snow and Gary DiSarcina is down now. The laughter and the giggles are only echoes, and the Angel clubhouse became a little colder Monday night with the team’s 10th consecutive loss and the post-game roster moves, headed by Snow being optioned to triple-A Vancouver.

Despite a .188 batting average and only five home runs and 26 runs batted in since May 1, Snow sat stunned at his locker, staring toward another stint in the minor leagues.

“I really didn’t expect it,” he said quietly. “I knew I hadn’t been playing and producing the way I had but, shoot, I figured that 11 home runs and 41 RBIs at the All-Star break, that’s a pretty good rookie year.

“My average wasn’t there. The numbers could have been better. I think expectations went up with my fast start. Mine did, too.”

It was a fairy tale beginning for Snow, son of former Ram Jack Snow, when he stepped into the Angel lineup on opening day and swung his bat with the authority of an All-Star. A home run put the exclamation point on opening day for Snow and, on April 24, he was hitting .407.

Then came the fall.

“I knew the game wasn’t going to be easy,” Snow said. “I just wasn’t doing the job and they felt they had to make a move. They said it was in my best interest.”

Indeed, that’s what Manager Buck Rodgers reiterated over a post-game plate of chicken wings as Snow began to pack.

“We tried everything in the world to get him straightened out,” Rodgers said. “We left him up until almost the first of August and it wasn’t working. He wasn’t getting it done.

“We felt that to salvage J.T. Snow, we had to get him out of here for a month, get him down to triple A where he has nothing to prove. Whatever it is that’s in his head, we have to get him back in a solid position for when he comes back in September.”

And for a team that has now lost 10 consecutive games, August and September sure look a lot different than did a glorious April.

“I was in lifting weights when Leonard Garcia (the Angels’ equipment manager) came in and said, ‘You better go talk to J.T., I think they just sent him down,’ ” said Torey Lovullo, one of Snow’s closest friends on the team. “I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’

“The difficult part is seeing a friend who is hurting. It goes to show you that this is a pretty intense game. If you don’t do what you’re capable of, they make changes.

“I feel for him. I’ve been there.”

No, Snow said, he didn’t feel like the Angels were singling him out. And yes, he said, he will be back.

“Nobody wants to go down once they come up, especially with the start I got off to,” Snow said. “I don’t want any pity. I’ve just got to get my game back together. . . .

“When you start struggling, even as a player the thing you want to do is change up. I went through that. I tried different stances, I tried putting my hands in different places, I tried thinking different things at the plate. Maybe I listened too much. Maybe I was too coachable.

“But that’s nobody’s fault but my own.”

Soon pitchers Chuck Finley, Mark Langston and Scott Sanderson came over and huddled around Snow, and they talked softly. And Snow stood there in front of his locker, already talking in the past tense, wondering how April could have disappeared so quickly.