This Crew Guarantees a Hometown Sweep

Baseball might be our tidiest pastime.

There are brush-back pitches, sweep tags and cleanup hitters, not to mention those fastidious umpires who spend half their days dusting home plate.

Still, fans seldom learn from all that order on the field. After the final runner is neatly thrown out, hordes of spectators trudge up the aisles, leaving in their wake a stadium that looks like the average teenager’s bedroom.

And that’s when Robert Donovan gets busy.

“People don’t think about the cleanup crews,” says Donovan, the bristle-haired boss of 250 people who swab, mop, sweep, hose, wipe, dust and polish Anaheim Stadium to a halo-like shine before each of the Angels’ 81 home games.

“Certainly, I didn’t think about the cleanup crews until I came to work here,” he says, recalling his first day on the job 15 years ago. “Ach, a bunch of guys sweeping up trash! I think they’re looked down on by a lot of people. But they take a lot of pride in what they do.”

Donovan’s proud crew makes possible that special summertime pleasure: Walking into a well- maintained ballpark. Their work is hard, tedious, back-breaking, and they earn roughly $8 an hour. Few fans notice their gleaming handrails and their immaculate seats (though two or three have actually written glowing letters about the stadium’s spick-and-span appearance).

Whether or not the public appreciates it, Donovan insists that he loves his work and enjoys watching Angels fans make pigs of themselves. The more the merrier, he says, and the messier the better.

Describing the moment when day breaks over a stadium brimming with soggy paper cups and gooey ice cream dishes, his eyes grow narrow. “I like that feeling,” he says, heartfelt as James Earl Jones in “Fields of Dreams.” “Most people working here like that feeling. It gives them an extra challenge, to get it looking like it does for the season opener.”

During the average game--Thursday night’s tilt, say, with the Seattle Mariners--20,000 fans typically deposit between five and six tons of trash around the stadium, including several hundred heaps of half-gnawed hot dogs, a few thousand dollops of half-dried mustard and a million or so saliva-soaked sunflower seeds.

“I hate sunflower seeds,” says Bobby Jacques, who’s spent 30 years following fans around with a dustpan.

Like tired hosts after a successful dinner party, Donovan and his crew let the mess sit overnight. But just after dawn, 75 sweepers begin pushing the huge drifts of loose trash up the aisles, separating the glass and cardboard for recycling and packing everything into large green bags.

On a typical day, the crew needs 5,500 trash bags, though the number depends on many factors, from the game-time temperature to the home team’s performance. (Lately, fewer Angels wins means smaller hauls.)

After workers sweep and bag the trash, dozens of maids and porters restore the corporate luxury boxes to their former luster (going so far as to dust the light bulbs and brass fixtures), while a squad of window washers takes vinegar and squeegees to the stadium’s half mile of glass.

By mid-morning, crews are moving methodically around the stadium, blasting the sticky residue of soda and beer with high-pressure hoses and citrus-based solvents. Throughout the early afternoon, a steady whooshing noise fills the stadium, a soothing sound that brings a smile to Donovan’s face. He sits in the press box, watching soapy water drizzle down from the upper decks, watching crows flit above the field like shadows of past foul balls.

Though he admits to being a poor housekeeper himself, and not much of a baseball fan, Donovan takes immense pleasure in seeing Anaheim Stadium spotless.

It’s a pleasure he will enjoy for only two months more, however, since the stadium soon becomes the property of Walt Disney Co. Donovan and his crew don’t work for the Angels, but for the city of Anaheim, and city officials tell them that their services are no longer required.

“As of Oct. 1,” he says, forlorn, “we go bye-bye.”

Fans might not see any difference next year in the stadium’s cleanliness. But that doesn’t bother Donovan and his crew. They never cleaned for the acclaim.

“The easier they make it look,” he says with a knowing smile, “the more people think, ‘Aw, it ain’t that much.’ ”