Angels’ Billmeyer Grabs a Bit of Fame

It wasn’t exactly the shot heard ‘round the world, but it will be the shot heard ‘round the Angel clubhouse for days, weeks, months--who knows how long?

Mick Billmeyer, the Angels’ bullpen catcher and designated quipster, provided the crowning moment of Monday’s Hall of Fame game, hitting a monster of a two-run home run off Montreal Expo pitcher Shayne Bennett in the eighth inning to help the Angels to a 6-6 tie.

Billmeyer had joked with Manager Marcel Lachemann on the team’s charter from Toronto to Utica, N.Y., Sunday night about getting an at-bat in the exhibition game, but Lachemann called his bluff, sending him in with the Angels trailing, 5-4, and a runner on third.

Billmeyer, 32, who played nine minor league seasons before joining the Angel coaching staff in 1994, responded by blasting an 0-2 pitch into the trees well beyond the right-field fence at Doubleday Field, a drive that seemed only a little less stunning than Joe Carter’s World Series-winning homer in 1993.

Looking like a guy who wanted to milk his 15 minutes of fame, Billmeyer admired the shot as it rose against a backdrop of lush, green rolling hills, and he trotted slowly around the bases, much to the approval of 9,791 spectators.

Montreal’s run in the top of the ninth, which tied the score, could hardly dampen Billmeyer’s enthusiasm. He hammed it up on KMPC’s post-game radio show and even signed a few autographs.

Then he turned to a handful of sportswriters and said, “You want to interview me? You’ve got to be kidding.”

They weren’t. Billmeyer said the pitch was a “a fastball, right down the middle . . . I hadn’t had an at-bat in three years, so it looked like it was going 100 mph.”

Billmeyer’s homer drove in Rex Hudler, who registered only a shade below Billmeyer on the Angels’ fun-o-meter Monday. Hudler spent the morning touring the Baseball Hall of Fame with a television crew from “This Week in Baseball,” his passion for the game gushing like Old Faithful.

Hudler described his visit as “amazing.” But when asked before the game to identify his tour highlight, Hudler said it was when an Angel team bus got stuck in a narrow, iron gate in the Hall of Fame parking lot before dropping off the players.

Hudler caught several balls in center field for inning-ending outs, and threw each one to fans in the outfield bleachers.

When Hudler came up in the eighth, the bleacher creatures showed their appreciation by chanting, “Rex! Rex! Rex!” Hudler pointed his bat to center field, and came within a few feet of duplicating Babe Ruth’s call-your-shot homer against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series, drilling a triple off the center-field wall.

Hudler, standing on third, then doffed his cap to the outfield fans, the second Angel to do so Monday afternoon. The first was batting instructor Rod Carew, one of the few Hall of Fame members in attendance.

Carew didn’t receive the celebrity treatment at the hall, though, because . . . well, he never made it.

Carew, seven-time American League batting champion who was inducted in 1991, said a faulty toilet in his Utica hotel room kept him awake until early Monday morning.

“When the phone rang for our 7 a.m. wake-up call, I thought I’d snooze for another 15 minutes,” Carew said. “The next time the phone rang, it was Frank [Sims, Angel traveling secretary] and it was 8:29 a.m.”

Plenty of Angels saw Carew’s plaque and were humored by the inscription, which calls Carew “a wizard with the bat who lined, chopped and bunted his way to 3,053 base hits.”

Said Carew: “Yeah, I’ve been taking a lot of heat for that.”

But Gary DiSarcina was awed.

“Seeing his name among Ty Cobb and Cy Young and all the others really puts him in a class by himself,” he said. “We see him every day, and sometimes you take for granted how much he’s done for the game. But when you see him with all those other guys, you realize he’s got a place in the big house.”