Now Angel Front Office Is Loaded With Rookies

The left-field scoreboard that now rests in pieces in the upper deck at Anaheim Stadium isn’t the first thing to collapse there.

Repairs will be expensive, perhaps costing as much as $4 million.

That’s for Gregg Olson, not the new scoreboard.

If there was earthquake insurance for baseball teams, Bill Bavasi’s new job would be so much easier. In the event that forces beyond your control--e.g., Hurricane Jackie--damage your starting rotation and destroy your relief pitching, you will be compensated in full. Bavasi, the Angels’ replacement general manager for Whitey Herzog, has inherited no such policy, only an Autry-endorsed fiscal policy that allows him to spend whatever it takes to upgrade the ballclub, provided it comes out of his own pocket.

Bavasi claims not to mind. “There are only 28 of these jobs,” he says, “and I’ve got one of them.” He considers this a good thing, but then Bavasi has been on the job only a week--his first week as a general manager anywhere, at any level--and he’s young, 36, which is young enough to be Herzog’s son, let alone his successor.

The Angels’ rash of hirings and promotions last week introduced a new hue in the team’s color scheme. Red, navy, silver . . . and now, green.

Last season, the Angels force-fed a slew of rookies onto the 25-man roster. This season, they’re force-feeding rookies into the front office.

The new lineup:

General manager--Bavasi, 36. Last week, he was Herzog’s assistant. Five months before that he was the Angels’ minor league director.

Assistant general manager--Tim Mead, 35. Last week, he was typing up press releases, same as he had done during his 13 years in the Angels’ publicity department.

Minor league director--Ken Forsch, 47. Never a minor league director anywhere else. Five months ago, he was selling real estate.

Assistant minor league director--Jeff Parker, 23. Broke in with the Angels as a bat boy for Gene Mauch. Later served as an assistant equipment manager and an administrative aide to Bavasi. Will be younger than many of the players he’ll be directing.

Unofficially, this is the youngest front-office staff in the major leagues.

“I bet it is,” Bavasi says. “I don’t know for certain; San Diego’s got to be pretty young. But look at Ken Forsch. He isn’t old by any means, but I guess I could call him the old man of the group.”

Bavasi laughs at the thought.

“That’s perfect. I think I will call him that.”

This time last year, the Angels’ everyday decisions were made by Herzog, now 62, and Dan O’Brien, who turns 65 in March. Now, the big desk belongs to Bavasi, who turns the conversation during an interview from baseball to the rock bands he’s currently listening to--Counting Crows and Crash Test Dummies.

This is one change from the Herzog/O’Brien regime.

Herzog and O’Brien never listened to Crash Test Dummies, although they did trade for a few.

This bodes well for the musical entertainment between innings at Anaheim Stadium, but what about the ballclub? Bavasi already suspects what the other teams are thinking--that the Angels’ staff is callow and inexperienced and (as they rub their hands together) possibly ripe for exploiting.

“I wouldn’t blame them,” Bavasi says. “I would expect them to. No sense worrying about it, I can’t change it. I’m more concerned with just being on top of things ourselves.”

On the wall of Mead’s new office, the one that used to belong to Herzog, is a purchase Mead made over the weekend, a framed photo of a crew team rowing in tandem. Underneath is an inscription that reads: “Teamwork Is The Ability To Work Together Toward A Common Vision . . . It Is The Fuel That Allows Common People To Attain Uncommon Results.”

“I thought that was appropriate,” Mead says. “We’re all common people here.”

“If we have any advantage,” Bavasi points out, “maybe it’s that we probably feel a great need to rely on each other. I have a sense right now that if one of us lets down a bit, we’ve shafted everybody. We’re going to need to support each other to do good work.”

Bavasi knows he “can’t operate like Whitey did. I can’t operate like a lot of baseball general managers. I can’t make a move just on my feelings, I can’t go into a triple-A club and look at a player and say, ‘That’s the guy.’

“I’ve got to rely on (scouting director) Bob Fontaine and (minor league hitting instructor) Joe Maddon and all of our people to make all of our decisions as correct as they can be.

“It’s not a perfect science, and we just need to be as accurate as we can, because the financial climate restricts the margin of error quite a bit.”

Take, for instance, the Gregg Olson negotiations, which have been dumped into Bavasi’s lap.

“A difficult one,” Bavasi says. “He has a lot of suitors because he’s a player that’s seldom out there. A closer is seldom out on the free-agent market, and he’s attractive because you don’t have to give up a draft pick and you don’t have to trade any players.

“But then again, the last thing he’s done as a professional is sit down for two months (with an elbow injury). So, you have to be careful.”

So Bavasi makes a lot of phone calls, to scouts, to doctors and occasionally, to Dad, also known as Buzzie, who knows the turf. Buzzie was the Angels’ general manager from 1978 through 1984. Buzzie presided during Gene Autry’s spend-free days, when free agents were delivered to Anaheim not by taxi but by Brinks truck.

The Angels won two division titles under Buzzie, but he will be forever remembered as the man who let Nolan Ryan get away. Bill could make major points with Angel fans now by saying he tried to talk Buzzie out of it, but, alas, his recollection of their discussions in late 1979 is a little foggy.

“The essence I got from it,” Bill Bavasi says, “was simple--it was just a hell of a lot of money.”

A generation later, the essence of running the Angels has hardly changed a bit.