Believers Watch in Despair as Final Verdict Is Rendered

“He’s gonna walk!” a waitress yelled at the TV screen, but she wasn’t talking about the California Angels batter with the full count.

She was talking about O.J. Simpson, because the Simpson murder trial was the only undecided contest still holding any suspense for Angels fans Monday afternoon.

Just after the Angels fell permanently behind in their sudden-death playoff game with the Seattle Mariners, news of an imminent Simpson verdict reached fans at the Catch, a sports bar directly across the street from Anaheim Stadium.

The timing could not have been more perfect.

At the close of one long, painful, sometimes silly struggle--otherwise known as the 1995 Angels season--it seemed fitting that another long, painful, sometimes silly struggle should be ending too.

Angels fans were glad for the symmetry. They were glad for the closure. If nothing else, they were glad for something else to talk about besides that gaudy 9-1 drubbing the hometown boys were being handed.

“This place got real quiet,” said bartender Jeri Turner, moments after the Mariners took a 5-0 lead.

She looked across the room, at the stunned faces of her regulars. Mouths agape, they gazed numbly at the TV, which broadcast the determined face of Seattle’s morose judge, Randy Johnson, who convicted the Angels and refused to grant them pardon.

Waitresses Jenny Vellegas and Lisa Moreno said the winter will be colder and harder now, thanks to the fallen Angels.

No playoffs means no rowdy fans; no rowdy fans means no obscenely big tips.

“A lot is riding on this,” Vellegas said.

But when the ride was over, even the waitresses had to be good sports. Along with their customers--some of whom had suffered at the hands of these inconsistent seraphim for decades--the women took a deep breath and quickly indulged in some therapeutic kibitzing about the Simpson case.

About as long as the Simpson jury deliberated, that’s how long the Angels had managed to keep the game close.

“This is going to happen!” said Sean Toohey, an insurance executive and Angels die-hard. “You just watch!”

He pumped his fist and quaffed his beer.

“We’re going to New York!” said 21-year-old Kirk Gay, referring to the Bronx, where the winner of Monday’s one-game playoff had a date with the American League’s wild-card team, the New York Yankees.

“I’ve never been to an Angel playoff game before,” Gay told his fellow fans. “Maybe this year I’ll lose my virginity.”

Alas, it was Gay’s fate to remain pure.

In the seventh inning, all halos broke loose.

With the bases loaded, a Seattle batter squibbed a ball behind first base, the location of so many tragic episodes in post-season baseball.

(See: Buckner, Bill, 1986.)

One minute, Angels fans were elated that their team was down by only one run.

The next minute, a fluke inside-the-park grand slam left the faithful thoroughly deflated.

Jill Judy of Irvine said she felt more devastated Monday than she did in 1986, the year of California’s last legendary collapse.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, Judy insisted, if the team had just gone quietly into that good night.

Instead, after swooning and stumbling and squandering a huge lead in their division, they sputtered to life, winning their last five games and forcing their fans to gaze longingly, once more, at those prematurely printed playoff tickets.

“I would love to not send them back,” she said of the ducats. “They’re beautiful.”

But they’re worthless, and she and thousands more fans must trade them in for a refund or be stuck with an expensive mistake.

So high were Judy’s hopes during the Angels’ semi-resurrection that she contemplated flying to Seattle for Monday’s game.

The night bartender at the Catch did more than contemplate. After Sunday’s rousing Angels victory, he drove to the airport.

“I’ll bet he’s real depressed right now,” said Turner.

Family and friends told Judy to go easy on the optimism.

They warned her that she was letting herself in for more heartache.

They reminded her of the past, into which all Angels fans are borne ceaselessly back, back, no matter how promising the present appears.

“Everyone said, ‘They’re going to let you down, they’re going to let you down, they’re going to let you down.’ ”

She glanced up at the TV, where the Angels were going down quietly.

Oh well, she sighed, turning to look out the window at the big, empty stadium across the street.

“Spring will come soon enough.”

Angels Coverage

* SHATTERED SEASON: The game-breaking hit broke a bat, but the splinters cut more deeply. C1

* BURIED AT HOME PLATE: Mark Langston’s despair proves team is cursed, Mike Penner writes. C1

* WHAT WENT WRONG: Hitting, pitching, team’s confidence. C8