Angels Back in Action--and They Hope Public Is Game : Sports: With strike over, players report for practice in Arizona. ‘The days of blowing off fans are over,’ one says.

Mark Langston isn’t even a coffee drinker, but there he stood in the Angel clubhouse Wednesday morning, enjoying the aroma from a cup of steaming Java and a scene that provided just as much warmth.

Before him was a room full of major league players, most dressed and ready to go at 8 a.m., a full hour before their first practice started at Tempe Diablo Stadium.

“This is tremendous, it’s great to be here and see the guys,” said Langston, a pitcher who was the team’s union representative during the 7 1/2-month strike.

“The drive from L.A. (Monday) was so fast, it was like I blinked and was in Phoenix. There’s no time to be bitter (about the labor dispute) now. All we can think about is getting ready as fast as we can.”

Five days after a National Labor Relations Board injunction ended the baseball strike and four days after teams sent replacement players packing, the real Angels enjoyed a spirited six-hour workout on a 90-degree day before only a handful of fans and a dozen reporters.

Returning to the familiar sights and sounds of the clubhouse and practice field helped players push the strike deeper into the past, but a 30-minute speech before practice by Manager Marcel Lachemann helped put it in perspective.

Lachemann reminded players of the damage the strike has done to the game, how fans are likely to take their frustrations out on them, and how players must bear a large part of the burden of repairing baseball’s tattered image.

“We have to show the fans we want to be back by the way we play,” Lachemann said. “And we have to go out of our way public relations-wise to do things with the fans and media that maybe we should have been doing all along.”

If that means signing a few extra autographs or stopping to chat with a few fans at a game or workout, shortstop Gary DiSarcina said he’s prepared to do so.

“The days of blowing off fans are over,” said DiSarcina, who is beginning his fourth season as a starter. “Guys can no longer afford to walk by fans and pay them no mind.”

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Fans were growing disenchanted with baseball long before the strike, as television ratings and popularity polls have shown.

But if there is one positive from the longest labor dispute in sports history, it could be that many baseball players have finally realized their sport is in trouble and that it’s up to them to fix it.

“We’ve been relying on tradition so long, but this is a new era, we’ve got to provide excitement,” second baseman Damion Easley said. “We were No. 1 for so long, then football, basketball and even hockey have caught up. How did they get there? By reaching out to the fans.”

Catcher Greg Myers, who wore a Mighty Ducks cap when he reported to camp Tuesday, thinks baseball can rebound.

“A lot of fans have turned to football and hockey, and then (Michael) Jordan comes back (to the Chicago Bulls),” he said. “It’s hard to say baseball will come back. It’s been such a long layoff. We still have a chance, but if this had gone into May or June, we would have been in big trouble.”

Some more than others.

“My wife was ready to throw me out if I didn’t get back to work soon,” said outfielder Jim Edmonds, who hit .273 as a rookie starter in 1994. “I’m sure everyone else is in the same category. I feel I have a purpose here instead of sitting home, bugging everyone.”

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Some players handled the time during the strike better than others. Easley learned to lay tile in his new house and painted for the first time in his life.

Reliever Mitch Williams, best known for giving up Joe Carter’s game-winning homer in the deciding Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, tended to his horses and cows on his Hico, Tex., ranch and had a little fun in another sport, slow-pitch softball.

“My first tournament I won a plaque for being home run king,” said Williams, who signed with the Angels over the winter. “I don’t know what level of softball it was. It was just a bunch of drunks, but I had a ball.”

Pitcher Brian Anderson, who went 7-5 as a rookie last season, took some classes at Wright State in Dayton, Ohio. Garret Anderson, expected to push Edmonds for the left field job, worked at a Miller’s Outpost in Valencia. And reliever Mark Holzemer, a rookie hoping to land a spot in the Angel bullpen, worked as a car salesman in suburban Phoenix.

“I only had a few people yell at me, so it wasn’t so bad,” Holzemer said. “The worst thing was selling a brand-new car, and two days later it broke down. I asked a salesman who had been around a while if he had any horror stories. He said he once sold a brand-new pickup truck, and as the guy was driving it off the lot the passenger door fell right off.”

There were no such breakdowns among the Angels on Wednesday. Lachemann said it was obvious players had been working out hard during the off-season, and he was pleased they began an abbreviated, three-week spring training in such good shape.

“You can see they’re past what they would normally be on the first day of spring training, especially the pitchers,” Lachemann said. “A lot of these guys were actually slowing down going through drills.”

The hardest part for several players during the off-season was staying motivated.

“Doing all the workouts with nothing to look forward to, no reporting date, made it tough,” said outfielder Tim Salmon, the 1993 American League Rookie of the Year who hit .287 with 23 homers and 70 runs batted in last season.

“You’d start hitting a plateau, then you’d go through so many different emotions, like, “What am I doing here? If I’m not going to be playing for three months, why am I working so hard?’ Then you’d tell yourself that the strike could end any day and you got back to work.”