Give Them A’s for Getting Him

Call it a bold and decisive move by the Angels. Call it a winning move.

Lose Tony Phillips, apparently, and replace him with a future Hall of Famer, maybe the best leadoff man ever, a prime-time player still capable of theatrics and dramatics.

“This is Rickey Henderson’s time of year,” said Dave Stewart, who shared the prime-time stage with Henderson when they were teammates with the Oakland Athletics and who is now assistant general manager of the San Diego Padres, the team that traded Henderson to the Angels on Wednesday.

Mark it down: Aug. 13 on the Hendersonian calendar.

“If I could pick a playoff and championship team, Rickey would be the first guy I’d pick,” Stewart said. “There is no one better.”

No one better, he meant, with the cameras turning, the crowd cheering and a pennant on the line.

Henderson has played for five division champions and three World Series teams.

He has been traded in July twice--from the New York Yankees back to Oakland in 1989 and from the A’s to the Toronto Blue Jays in ‘93--and ended up with a World Series ring in both years.

He is 38 now and the glory years with the A’s are behind him, but he joins the Angels with a .274 average for 88 games and a characteristic on-base percentage of .422.

Although hampered by injuries early and forced to share left field with Greg Vaughn, he has made good on 29 of 32 steal attempts, raising his all-time record to 1,215.

He also has hit six home runs, raising his total to 250, and has a .346 average with runners on base and a .318 average with runners in scoring position.

“On a given day, he’s every bit the player he’s always been,” Stewart said. “He can still steal a base, still hit for power, still win a game by himself.

“If he gets four at-bats, he’s capable of scoring four runs. I’m sure when Angel fans read that the team has acquired Rickey, that will create an excitement in itself.”

Make no mistake: The Angels moved quickly and aggressively to take advantage of Henderson’s availability because they ultimately expect Phillips to enter a substance-abuse program that could sideline him for two to four weeks, maybe longer.

General Manager Bill Bavasi said he would be lying if he said that Phillips’ situation didn’t factor into the speed with which Henderson was pursued--at a time when other American League clubs were in that hunt.

He added, however, that the Angels also have been looking to invigorate the offense since Jim Edmonds went on the disabled list.

“This says a lot of things in a lot of different ways,” Tim Mead, assistant general manager, said when asked about the connection between Henderson’s acquisition and the possible loss of Phillips.

“The bottom line is that baseball is still the most important issue for us, and this shows our players that that hasn’t been lost on anyone. I mean, they’ve worked hard to get to this point, and we’re not about to throw that away.”

Phillips is expected to meet with doctors representing the clubs and players’ union by the end of the week. It would be a surprise if he does not enter a counseling program and go on the disabled list.

“You look at their numbers the last few years and they’re almost alike,” Stewart said of Henderson and Phillips. “The Angels have put themselves right back in step with what they’ve lost.”

Henderson, of course, will bat leadoff, dropping the impressive Darrin Erstad lower in the lineup, and his return to the American League, where he spent 17 years, will allow him to rest his legs on occasion as the designated hitter.

With San Diego already having paid the bulk of his $2-million base salary (he also receives $5,000 for every plate appearance between 301 and 600), Henderson comes comparatively cheaply.

The Angels gave up three minor leaguers, none of them a top pitching prospect. The Seattle Mariners aren’t going to automatically capitulate, but Bavasi and Mead have added a premier leadoff hitter and a bona fide pitcher (Ken Hill) without breaking up their major league nucleus or yielding the best of a thin farm system.

The Padres had been trying to disengage the Henderson-Vaughn logjam since the end of last winter. The Angels had made a futile run at Henderson in the spring and would not have gotten him now if the Yankees had not backed out of a recent deal for Vaughn because they were leery of a Vaughn shoulder injury.

Henderson often has marched to his own drummer, but Stewart said: “Rickey has been a good player for us on the field and a professional in the clubhouse. He’s been outstanding in the way he’s handled a difficult situation. He told us, ‘Give me the opportunity to play and I’ll prove I can win the job,’ and that’s what he did.”

Henderson now has the opportunity to win more than that with the Angels. He has done it before at this time of year.