DiSarcina Can’t Shake Sinking Feeling

Gary DiSarcina, Angel assistant player-representative, faithfully watches TV each night, scanning all of the channels from ESPN to CNN, searching for the slightest hints of optimism that the baseball strike will be resolved.

Instead, he goes to sleep more discouraged than ever, losing hope that this season can be salvaged.

“It’s an eerie feeling,” he said. “It’s like a rain delay that never ends. You try to enjoy the time off, but it’s impossible.

“It feels like pre-spring training. You just don’t know what to do. You ask yourself, ‘Should I stay in shape?’

“And then I watch TV, and say, ‘This season is over. Why even bother?’

“My personal feeling is that the season is over.”

In fact, even if the work stoppage were to end well before anyone’s expectations, DiSarcina believes it’s too late to save any semblance of a pennant stretch.

“Even if we were to come back,” he said, “the feeling I get is that it will go past Labor Day. By that time, it will be so late in the season that everything will be tainted, anyway.

“You’re talking about guys who haven’t done anything but golf, fish and hunt. It’s going to be like spring training all over again. You’ll see pulled hamstrings, sore arms, everything.

“It’s going to be tough just getting everybody back here. This team has shot off in every direction. Joe Grahe’s on a fishing boat some place. Russ Springer is somewhere in the bayou. And who knows if we’ll ever find Bo (Jackson) . . . “

In fact, the only other Angel players who live elsewhere in the off-season and still remain in town are Rex Hudler and Joe Magrane. And Hudler plans to take off next week for a vacation.

DiSarcina, who lives in Cape Cod during the winter, might soon be next.