BASEBALL ‘94: Going, Going. . .Gone : ‘We Stunk,’ Bavasi Says, in Assessing Angels’ Performance : Baseball: General manager has been busy plotting changes for next season, trying to avoid another dismal showing.

Bill Bavasi stood off to the side of the Angel clubhouse, nervously shuffling his feet, wincing in anticipation of the speech his boss was about to deliver.

Bavasi, the first-year general manager of the Angels, braced himself for pain and humiliation. Angel owner Gene Autry stepped forward and was addressing the team Aug. 10 in what turned out to be the final game of the 1994 season.

“I expected him to blast us,” Bavasi remembers, “and I knew if he ripped us to high hell, we would deserve everything he said.

Instead, Bavasi stood with his mouth agape, listening to Autry actually tell the Angels that he appreciated everything they did this season. OK, maybe they didn’t accomplish nearly what they wanted, but deep down in their hearts, Autry said he knew they agonized just as much as he did over their failures.

Autry finished speaking, thanked his team one final time for its effort, and stepped back.

“I never felt like such a loser in my life,” Bavasi said. “I just felt so awful for what happened this season. That speech brought everyone to their knees.

“I knew then, just what it meant, when people say, ‘Let’s win one for the Cowboy.’

“And believe me, what happened this year, isn’t going to happen again.

“I’ve never wanted to win so bad in my entire life.”

Bavasi concedes he actually envisioned winning the World Series this season. He dreamed of sitting in his suite as the first-year general manager, watching the final out, and standing in the clubhouse drenched with champagne.

His father, Buzzie Bavasi, who won four World Series as general manager of the Dodgers, told him that there’s no feeling more beautiful in the world, and Bill wanted that.

“When I assessed this team back in spring training,” Bavasi said, “I actually thought this would be a .500 team. And when I assessed the rest of the division, I knew that might be good enough. I realized Chicago was by far and away the best team in our league, but once you get to the playoffs, anything’s possible.

“So I can honestly tell you that I didn’t expect this. I never thought we would be this bad.

“The fact is, we stunk.”

The Angels finished the season with a 47-68 record, the second-worst winning percentage in franchise history.

No team in the American League was worse.

The San Diego Padres saved the Angels from the worst record in baseball.

“I’m thankful we weren’t getting ripped like we could have been this year,” Bavasi said. “It’s been an amazingly positive season for as bad as it’s been.

“That’s why when our players criticized our fans this year, I couldn’t disagree with them more. I was around here in ‘79, ’82 and ‘86, and these fans respond when you play well. But if you don’t give them anything to cheer about, it’s your own damn fault.

“Look at our record. Come on, what did they have to cheer about? You take this team and put it in New York, and then it’s, ‘Heads up, boys.’ You’d really see something then. They should have been thanking their lucky stars for the way we were treated by our fans.

“The way we played, we deserved to get verbally nuked.”

The only redeeming aspect of the Angels’ season was that they played to the level of their competition in the American League West. Everyone was rotten. The Angels finished only 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Texas Rangers in the AL West.

“I told Billy the other day,” said Peter Bavasi, former general manager at Toronto and Cleveland and Bill’s older brother, “that when people ask how your first ballclub finished, just say, ‘We finished 5 1/2 games back.’

“People will think, ‘Oh, what a great year.’

Billy told me, ‘Hey, not a bad idea, I never thought about that one.”

Said Buzzie: “Leave it to Peter to think of that one. But knowing Billy, he’d never, ever say that. He knows what kind of season it was, and really, he took this a lot harder than I ever did.

“Of course, he didn’t have Koufax or Drysdale or Furillo or Snyder or Hodges or Jackie Robinson, either.”

“When you look what he had to work with, he did as fine a job as anybody under the circumstances. He didn’t have the money, and he didn’t have the players. I think he would have done a real fine job if he had the wherewithal.

“Believe me, if he has the money, he’ll know how to use it.”

The Angel player payroll was $23.3 million in 1994, lowest in the American League. Yet, if everything goes according to plan, ownership may provide Bavasi nearly $27 million for the 1995 season.

They opened negotiations with Chili Davis on a two- or three-year contract that will pay him about $3.5 million to $4 million a season. They vow to start the ’95 season with a veteran closer, and could easily renew talks with the Minnesota Twins about Rick Aguilera. They want a right-handed starter; no, not left-handed free agent Jim Abbott. And they want another power-hitter in the lineup, either at third base or first base.

“I think the most frustrating thing for Billy is to think about the team he could have had,” Buzzie Bavasi said. “They’d have a better club with just the guys they got rid of than the guys they have.

“Just think of the club if they had kept (Bryan) Harvey, (Wally) Joyner and Abbott. It would be a pennant-winner today.”

It matters little to Bavasi, who refuses to waste time dwelling on the past. He’s not going to criticize his predecessor, Whitey Herzog, for the moves he made. And he’s not going to torment himself knowing that he’s paying $2.9 million to a third baseman (Gary Gaetti) who’s no longer with the team, and still owes $2 million next season to a pitcher (Joe Magrane) who has been rendered useless.

If anything, he’s using those blunders to his advantage, realizing that he can ill afford to make mistakes that a $40-million payroll can cover up.

It was back in spring training when he was on the verge of trading first baseman J.T. Snow to the New York Mets for pitcher Anthony Young. In fact, if Young had not pulled a groin muscle in a spring-training start, Bavasi says, “The deal is done.”

Bavasi backs out of the deal, Young is traded to the Chicago Cubs, and today, Young is recovering from major elbow surgery that will keep him sidelined through the 1995 season.

Then, there were the free-agent acquisitions he tried to make during the off-season. He out-bid the Colorado Rockies for starter Mike Harkey, and the Atlanta Braves for reliever Gregg Olson. Fortunately for Bavasi, neither took his offer, and they both turned out to be free-agent busts.

He and Yankee General Manager Gene Michael had a trade worked out April 1 that would have rocked the baseball world. He was sending Snow and minor-league prospects Ryan Hancock and Jeff Schmidt to the Yankees for Abbott. The Yankees were then going to turn around and send Snow and third-base prospect Russ Davis to the Twins for Aguilera. The press release was typed and ready to be distributed.

Michael called back that evening. Sorry, owner George Steinbrenner nixed the trade. It was over, and the Angels wound up saving the $2.9 million it would have cost to pay Abbott.

“It’s not that we did the right thing, but we got lucky,” Bavasi said. “That’s all it was, luck.”

Instead of making the major trade that would brand the Bavasi regime, and forgetting that he was the man who brought Bo Jackson back to Southern California and signed four players to multiyear contracts, Bavasi instead will be remembered by the public as the man who fired Manager Buck Rodgers.

If trying to trade a player as popular as Snow was bold, what do you call a move in which you fire the most identifiable Angel, who was adored by fans and the media?

“My approach from the start was to make it work,” Bavasi said. “Buck was not the manager I hired, but I thought I could make it work. I hate those general managers that come to a team, and just start firing everybody.

“But it just wasn’t working, and there wasn’t the communication that was needed. It became apparent it was something I had to do. The only reason I would have even delayed a decision like that is for political reasons and publicity reasons. I’m proud to say we didn’t.

“I didn’t expect to be praised for it, but I’ve certainly never regretted it.”

Said Angel President Richard Brown: “That move took a lot of guts. He made every attempt for it to work with Buck, and when it was time to make a decision, he did it.

“It was like he was saying, ‘If you’re going to judge me, judge me with my team and my manager. Don’t judge me with a manager I don’t want and a team I don’t want.

“Believe me, you’re not going to see the same team next year.”

There will be plenty of changes for 1995, beginning with virtually a complete overhaul of the bullpen, and perhaps as many as three players in the everyday lineup. Manager Marcel Lachemann and Bavasi already have been plotting strategy for the entire organization, implementing a uniform scouting system, and ensuring that all the coaches are accountable for specific aspects of the team.

“For the first time since I’ve been here,” Brown said, “I can say it’s a joy for the front office to work with one another. There’s mutual respect. You can’t expect players to act like a team on the field when you’re not a team in the front office.

“Finally, we are a team.”

Bavasi and assistant Tim Mead also have gone to great extremes to bridge the gap between the front office and players. Bavasi visited Gary and Janee DiSarcina at the hospital when they had their first baby this summer. Mead stayed until the wee hours of the morning with Allison Leiter, Mark Leiter’s wife, when their baby died in April. They stayed with coach Jimmie Reese the night he died in July. Bavasi even presented all of the players personalized money clips before the start of the season.

The Angel players, for goodness sakes, responded by taking time out Friday in the middle of a vicious strike to present Bavasi with a gift. Rod Carew, hitting coach, gave Bavasi an encased lineup card and game ball of the Angels’ opening-day victory, autographed by the entire team. The inscription read: “Bill, congratulations on your first win as general manager of the California Angels.

“From: The team.”

“Players get generalized, managers get generalized,” Mead said, “but Bill Bavasi is the complete person.”

Buzzie Bavasi, who once occupied the same office as his son, shakes his head in wonderment. The game has drastically changed, but here is his son, once again carrying on the Bavasi tradition, only in his own style.

“It’s unbelievable how this game works today,” Buzzie Bavasi said. “We’re paying .250 hitters a million dollars a year. We used to release .250 hitters when I was with the Dodgers.

“God bless him, I know I couldn’t do it today, not the way the game’s changed. I’d either be in jail for hitting a guy in the nose or commit suicide.

“But with Billy, well, he’s got the perfect temperament.

“Peter’s interest was always on the business side of baseball. But not Billy. He has the passion.

“He loves this game.

“You know something, he loves this game as much as Gene Autry.”