Fair Weather and Fans : Sunny Skies Help Entice Big Opening-Day Crowd but Fail to Brighten Outcome for Angels

A spectacular spring day brought thousands of Angels fans to Monday’s opening home game to bask in balmy, 82-degree weather in swim trunks, bikini tops and T-shirts.

“It’s a good day to play hooky and a beautiful day to take my son to an Angels ballgame,” said Debbie Bosecker, 30, of Costa Mesa, who had dressed her 2-year-old son in Angels blue and red.

Bosecker joined 37,285 fans who watched the Angels begin the 1994 home season with a 9-6 loss to the Cleveland Indians.

Denise Cole, 29, of Brea summed it up: “Beautiful day. (Bad) game.”

Warm weather--and the Angels’ 2-for-1 admission--may have resulted in the larger-than-anticipated crowd that led to lengthy waits at concession stands.

“The bad thing is that we went to get lemonade and it took two innings because of the long line,” Bosecker said. The compensation? They “ate everything.”

John Trosper, concession manager, said that 38 of the stadium’s 47 stands were kept extremely busy well into the sixth inning.

“The anticipated figure for (fans who buy tickets the day of the game) was 4,000 to 7,000, and we exceeded that figure,” Trosper said.

Once fans bought their hot dogs, cold beers and peanuts, the only thing left was to settle into a stadium seat and listen to the sounds of spring: the crack of the bat and the roar of the crowd.

“I’ve been an Angel fan since 1970,” said Roger Tawara, 32, a mail clerk from Sherman Oaks who took a day off work to watch his favorite team. “We lived in L.A., but my father gave up on the Dodgers a long time ago.”

Cleveland Indians fan Roger Galka, 30, whose boss gave him three days off entirely for baseball-watching, had driven from his home in San Diego wearing a Cleveland batting jersey and a Cleveland baseball cap.

“I grew up in Aurora, Ohio, and I’ve been a Cleveland fan ever since,” said Galka, a grocery produce clerk.

After two Cleveland players smacked home runs in the fifth inning, Galka’s friends began yelling, “Sweep! Sweep!”

Noticeable this year was a gaping hole in the upper decks exposing naked girders where the stadium’s huge Sony Jumbotron scoreboard fell during the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake.

Steve and Mary Brace, who had driven more than 65 miles from Arleta for the home opener, said they wondered about that space.

“I thought it was like a stadium sunroof,” Brace said.