Yes, He’ll Make a Difference

Face it, only one group of people will be happy Eddie Murray is back in town.

It’s not the media. He’ll be as quiet as a first inning at the Big A.

It’s not the stat geeks. He’ll be 41 by opening day, and had only three hits in his final 28 at-bats during the last regular season.

It’s not the amateur scouts. He has increasing trouble facing fastball pitchers without racking up delinquent charges.

The only group who will be happy that Murray signed with the Angels Wednesday is the one with neither influence nor agenda.

The group who only wants to win.

The Angel fans.

Because, of all the things Murray can no longer do, none of them involves the ability to walk to home plate at 10:20 on a July night and use his bat to make thousands of sad folks shout.

He will win games with eighth-inning doubles down the line.

He will win games with ninth-inning sacrifice flies to the fence.

Come to think of it, he will probably win at least one game with a grand slam--he ranks second on the all-time list with 19 in 20 seasons.

He will win also games sitting on the bench, watching Darin Erstad outguess a reliever just like Murray taught him, watching Garret Anderson steal a

base after picking up a sign that Murray showed him.

Murray’s most important statistic of last season wasn’t his 22 homers or 79 RBIs while playing for the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles.

It wasn’t the 152 games he played, mostly as a designated hitter, despite a damaged left shoulder.

The most important statistic was 38-28.

That was the Orioles’ record after they acquired him on July 21.

They went from four games above .500 to 14 games above. From out of the playoffs to the American League championship series.

And to a man, the players said the difference was Murray.

His quiet but commanding presence bridged the gap between players and coaches, kids and veterans.

His quiet but commanding swing bridged the gap between home plate and the right-field corner in the late innings of important games down the stretch.

Five years after the Dodgers thought he was slowing down . . . three years after the New York Mets thought he was getting old . . . two months after the Indians thought he was finished . . . Murray showed he could still work the room.

He showed that a stadium full of people chanting, “Ed-die, Ed-die” sounds the same today as it did when Bowie Kuhn was commissioner.

It is no coincidence that Murray has been to the playoffs the last two seasons with teams--the Indians and Orioles--that had not been there in years.

Before signing with the Angels and turning down an Orioles’ offer that was shy a few incentives, Murray wondered if he could find that magic one last time in Anaheim.

“I did lot of thinking [in the] last couple of days, going position by position [with the Angels], thinking who was there,” he said. “That was fun last year, fun the year before in Cleveland, that’s what it’s about.”

And he decided that, “I do believe we could cause a lot of havoc here.”

About those concerns.

Yes, he is quiet. But in a clubhouse run by Ticking Terry Collins and filled with hothead newcomers such as Dave Hollins and Jim Leyritz, the team will be begging for the order he will provide.

Yes, his statistics have declined. He is no Cecil Fielder. He may not be able to carry a team like one.

But if the Angels felt they needed somebody with those kind of shoulders, they would have shelled out another $5 million or so to trade for the guy.

Murray was hired as a straight man to the likes of Tim Salmon, Jim Edmonds, Hollins and Anderson. It is a role he has worked on for a lifetime.

And those skills, yes, even General Manager Bill Bavasi admitted that Murray’s bat has slowed. This was painfully obvious last year against hard throwers.

Which would mean something if the league had more than a handful of hard throwers.

Murray has enough left to outsmart the rest of them, or at least frustrate them a bit before they face the bottom of the order.

Some will say that Wednesday’s signing represented a bad trade: Murray acquired to fill the hole left by departed Chili Davis, who is younger and had better batting numbers.

But Wednesday was not about numbers. The Angels held all the numbers last year, and every one of them added up to 19 1/2 games out of first place.

Wednesday was about winning, a quaint ideal previously lost somewhere in recesses of the Angel clubhouse, rolling back to the center of the room at the end of a Hall of Fame bat.