He’s Kind of Presence Angels Need

Few things fit so well as a fat man and Christmas. Bless those Angels for giving us Cecil Fielder, round and renewed and right on time.

They needed a designated hitter, and he is it.

They needed an attraction for their renovated ballpark, and he is it.

They needed a reason for their fans to forget about Mark McGwire and, well . . .

“You’ve got to be able to be a man, to look yourself in the mirror and say, ‘Go get it,’ ” Fielder said Friday night after becoming Disney’s newest character. “That’s what I’m doing here.”

OK, at least he will make fans forget Tony Phillips, whose admitted use of a mirror for other reasons helped cost the Angels a division championship last year.

Is Fielder enough to make up the six games that the Angels finished behind the Seattle Mariners?

With Ken Hill around for an entire season, those six games become three, and Fielder is more than enough to make up for that.

He has the body of a giant cruller with a jelly-filled personality, all bright and loud and fun.

And he can still hit it to La Puente.

In his last full season without an injury--two years ago--he hit 39 homers, drove in 117, and then hit .391 for the New York Yankees in the World Series.

The Angels nearly traded for him during the last off-season. They took Eddie Murray instead, and regretted it.

This move is not that move.

At 34, Fielder is six years younger than Murray was last season. With only one trip to the disabled list in his 12-year career, Fielder is more durable than Murray was last season.

You wouldn’t think that an organization that brags about signing Omar Olivares as a fifth starter could afford Fielder, and the Angels couldn’t, but for last year’s bad thumb, bad blood with George Steinbrenner, and an admittedly bad attitude.

Fielder hated New York, which is good. Hated it so much he refused to drive there, hiring a chauffeur for his daily trips to Yankee Stadium.

He hated sitting on the bench amid Joe Torre’s constantly changing lineup, which is also good. Hated it so much he demanded a trade, but continued to play hard while doing it.

The most impressive statistic of a 98-game, 13-homer year? He hit .309 with three home runs and 10 RBIs during the Yankees’ last 13 games after he returned from a thumb injury.

“You’ve got to be able to a finish a season,” he said.

By then, though, it was too late. Perceptions changed. Jackie Gleason became the Hunchback. The man who once hit 51 home runs became a bag of balls.

He was a free agent, but not the way Kenny Lofton was a free agent. All of the great free-agent hitters signed, and he was left.

Only one other team really wanted him, but that was the Minnesota Twins, and they are always hiring big guys.

The Angels got him because he grew up in La Puente, and his wife and two children wanted to spend the summer around the relatives.

He comes home not as an exclamation point, but a question mark.

He knows this. He says he will use this. Considering he has only a one-year contract--the baseball equivalent of a loaded gun stuck in the back--you believe him.

“Last year was a mental block, but that’s over with,” he said from his Florida home. “I’ve been working all winter, I’m in the best shape I’ve been in for a long time. . . . I’m coming to play, no matter what anybody says about me or feels about me.”

The Angels have a bunch of guys who come to play. What they need is somebody who can help them play an entire six months.

Fielder is just that. He is known as “Big Daddy,” not just because his teen-age son is his constant clubhouse companion but because he counsels everyone else in there.

“I can’t explain it when somebody talks about the Angels,” he said. “They have the talent to win, but sometimes they just can’t do it.

“Like a couple of years ago, they were leading, and Seattle was coming after them, and they just couldn’t get over the hump. They have to learn to get over that hump.”

If they can’t do it themselves, Fielder could be the one to carry them there.

He will fit nicely into a rotation with top young hitters Darin Erstad, Jim Edmonds, Tim Salmon and Garret Anderson. He wants to play first base, but you get the sense he won’t complain much when he is the designated hitter, as long as he is in the lineup.

Incidentally, for the Angels to have acquired McGwire last summer, at least one of those four hitters would no longer be with the team.

“We would have had McGwire, but we would have had a big, big hole on our club,” General Manager Bill Bavasi said. “Now, Cecil will add to those other hitters.”

He’ll add a ton.