Former Utility Man Velarde Happy to Be Angel Specialist

Randy Velarde used to come to the park with an assortment of baseball gloves and absolutely no idea where he would be playing or if he’d be playing.

“It was like going to the airport every day and flying standby, not knowing if you’re going to get a flight,” Velarde said. “It was a tough mental grind, and it really took a toll.”

Velarde, an eight-year utility player with the New York Yankees, will be free of such anxiety this season. As the Angels’ starting second baseman, he has been bumped up to first class.

The Angels made a three-year, $2.45-million commitment to Velarde, virtually assuring he would be an everyday player. Just in case Velarde had any doubts, Manager Marcel Lachemann said in the first week of spring training Velarde would replace Tony Phillips as the team’s leadoff batter.

So that gives Velarde a lineup spot and job security in a clubhouse he describes as being “incredibly more relaxed” than New York’s, where omnipotent Yankee owner George Steinbrenner always made his presence felt.

“I’ve gone from the Bronx to Disneyland,” Velarde said. “How can you top that?”

By making Angel fans forget Phillips, the fiery former Angel who hit .261 with 27 home runs, 61 runs batted in, 119 runs and 113 walks, and had a .394 on-base percentage in 1995.

Velarde realizes this is an impossible task. He has never hit more than 13 homers in one professional season. His single-season highs for runs (60) and walks (55) in 1995 would be near career lows for Phillips. His .375 on-base percentage would be subpar for Phillips.

Looking for speed? Velarde has 22 stolen bases . . . in his career. Want a sparkplug, a vocal leader? The low-key Velarde may show as much emotion in an entire month as the combustible Phillips showed in most at-bats.

“I don’t want to change my style that much,” said Velarde, a career .264 hitter from Midland, Texas. “I’m going to have to make little adjustments, but I can’t just overhaul stuff. That’s not what management wants me to do.”

The way Lachemann and Velarde see it, the Angels won’t have a prototypic leadoff hitter in 1996, so there shouldn’t be much pressure on Velarde to match Phillips’ success.

“I’ve endured enough of New York to know what pressure is,” Velarde said, “and this isn’t it.”

If Velarde felt pressure, he’s not the type to show it.

“After being around the media, fans and owner in New York, nothing really bothers him out there,” Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina said. “He doesn’t wear his emotions on his sleeve. He’s composed, there’s a professional aura about him, and it seems like nothing is going to rattle him.”

Velarde found a comfort zone immediately in Tempe, where he sensed on the first day of camp that the atmosphere would be to his liking.

“The first team meeting was short, and we talked about last year, about baseball,” Velarde said. “With the Yankees that first meeting would last an hour and a half, and we’d go over dress codes, how you should cut your hair, whether or not you could wear gold chains, all these nit-picking things instead of just focusing on baseball and winning.”

Another pleasant surprise in Tempe: No media mob. It was common for 20 or so reporters to cover the Yankees’ first workout in Florida, and for about a dozen to travel with the team regularly.

In Arizona, Velarde was greeted by two reporters--that’s the size of the press corps that now travels with the Angels full time.

“The press in New York was always pretty fair to me, but you had to be careful what you said,” Velarde said. “Some guys tried to stir it up. I guess it was boring for them to write about wins and losses, so they had to find out who’s cheating on their wives, who’s staying out late . . . it was like the National Enquirer.”

Though Velarde, 33, spent his entire career with the Yankee organization, he has at least one thing in common with his new Angel teammates: A strong dislike of the Seattle Mariners.

The Angels blew a 13-game lead in the American League West to Seattle last August and September and Oct. 2 lost a one-game playoff against the Mariners to determine the division champion.

Velarde was on the Yankee team that lost to the Mariners in the memorable American League division series, in which Seattle lost the first two games but came back to sweep the next three, the final two in dramatic fashion, to advance to the championship series.

“I’m not too much of a Seattle fan,” said Velarde, who hit .176 in the series. “There was bad blood between us and them, so I can empathize with these guys as well. But they’re the champs until we say otherwise.”

Perhaps Velarde will have something to say about that. He has a .500 career average (18 for 36) against Seattle ace and 1995 Cy Young Award winner Randy Johnson, the highest mark of any player with 20 at-bats against the Mariner left-hander. At one point, Velarde was 15 for 19 against Johnson, who has dominated most AL hitters.

“I’m sure if you asked him, he wouldn’t even know about it,” Velarde said. “I doubt I’m one of the top 10 most-feared hitters he’s had to face.”

Actually, Velarde is wrong. Johnson is well aware of Velarde’s success rate against him.

“Even though he’s not a $7-million player like Barry Bonds or Frank Thomas, he’s given me the most fits of all the players in the league,” Johnson said. “I think it’s probably because he’s a good fastball hitter and contact hitter, which is a great combination against a power pitcher.”

Johnson got the best of Velarde and his Yankee teammates in the playoffs last season, but even though 1995 ended bitterly for Velarde, experiencing the thrill of postseason play for the first time rejuvenated his career.

Velarde may have hit a low point in 1994, when the strike wiped out the playoffs and World Series during a season in which the Yankees had the best record in baseball.

“I was at the point where I was starting to think, ‘Man, this isn’t fun anymore,’ ” Velarde said. “You go to the park, punch the clock, and it didn’t matter whether you won or lost.

“But making the playoffs made me realize that this is what you play for. It was like dangling a steak in front of a hungry dog. I want to experience that feeling again.”