Abbott Learns Warning No Joke

The warnings are posted all over the Angels’ Tempe Diablo Stadium clubhouse: “Attention! Look out for scorpions. Check all your gloves, shoes and gym bags.”

Pitcher Jim Abbott never paid much attention to the signs . . . until Monday, when he found an inch-long scorpion in his sneaker.

“It was scary,” said Abbott, who found the poisonous arthropod as he pulled tissue out of a new shoe. “I’d been taking the warning for granted. I was lucky. If it wasn’t a new shoe, I just would have put it on without even looking.”

The incident brought to mind the time triple-A Manager Don Long, was stung by a scorpion at the Angels’ old training facility in Mesa a few years ago. An obviously frightened Long rushed to trainer Rick Smith, screaming, “Am I going to be all right? Am I going to be all right?”

Deadpanned Smith, “We’ll know in about five minutes.”

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Manager Marcel Lachemann, criticized in 1995 for overworking some players, said he will try to give regulars a day off every 30 days or so, whether they like it or not. Already, some don’t like it.

“You may be playing well, feel real locked in, and a day off disrupts your rhythm,” first baseman J.T. Snow said. “I took a day off in Milwaukee last season and went into a mini-funk.”

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The Angels will play intrasquad games today and Wednesday, then will play Cal State Fullerton Thursday. Shawn Boskie is scheduled to start against the defending College World Series champions, who will use aluminum bats. . . . Mark Langston is scheduled to start the Angels’ Cactus League opener against the Oakland Athletics on Friday at Tempe.