McWhy’re Angels Waffling?

Mark McGwire is a great big slugger for the Oakland Athletics who was born in Pomona, brought up in Claremont and belongs belting baseballs in Anaheim. He could be bigger here than Reggie Jackson was and inspire a McGwire candy bar, which would be much larger than a Reggie, but not as nutty.

That is why I disagree with the Angels, regarding their difficult decision not to trade for McGwire.

Opportunity is knocking. Answer the door.

Win a pennant (finally), watch an Angel hit 50 or 60 home runs (finally) and sell out that new stadium for 1998, because if the Angels don’t win something one of these years, they might as well move to Pomona.

Great teams take great risks.

Toronto did. Atlanta did. Cleveland did. They didn’t sit back in the ‘90s and simply wait for their prospects to develop. They traded for Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar. They signed Greg Maddux and traded for Fred McGriff. They signed Orel Hershiser and traded for Marquis Grissom and David Justice.

You don’t stand pat, after going 36 years without a World Series.

Sometimes, you have to give up good players when you get a shot at a great player.

Mark McGwire could make the difference.

He could help the Angels win something now, rather than wait for next season, when 30 teams will fight for one championship. Chances like this are rare. Seize the day.

I know the Angels are red hot. That is why Tony Tavares, the team president, and Bill Bavasi, the general manager, must be hesitant to tamper or tinker.

That’s the point. All these guys need is one more shot in the arm, and they could go all the way. They could be every bit as good as the Yankees, the Indians, the Mariners, anybody in the American League, and I mean overnight.

McGwire’s got the arms to give them a shot.

He hit two more homers Wednesday night, to give him 34. McGwire would give the Angels a genuine first baseman, rather than a converted outfielder. If you trade, say, Garret Anderson to the Athletics, you could have McGwire at first, an outfield of Darin Erstad, Jim Edmonds and Tim Salmon, a batting order with Tony Phillips on top . . . man, as an Angel fan, this would make my mouth water.

That team would make the Colorado Rockies look like a bunch of slap hitters.

Selfishly, I would love to see McGwire go after Roger Maris’ 61-homer record here. I would be out there every night, to see if poor Mark’s hair fell out in clumps, the way Roger’s did. (Or maybe his beard.)

And who knows? On the night McGwire hit homer No. 62, the Angels might even draw more than 20,000 fans.

Look, there is no guarantee.

I understand how risky it can be, parting with an Anderson, an Edmonds or an Erstad, gambling on an accident-prone guy like McGwire who hasn’t played 140 games in a season since 1991.

And, it’s expensive. McGwire’s salary alone is somewhere between Albert Belle’s and Demi Moore’s.

Tavares would understandably prefer to wait until McGwire is a free agent. That way the Angels wouldn’t give up anything but money.

But that way, other teams can try to outbid Anaheim. I realize that McGwire misses his old homeboys here in Southern California, but he is also a businessman. Cleveland can be look very pretty on 11 mil a year.

If the Angels weren’t the Angels, I would advise them to be patient. But that’s all the Angels have ever been, patient. The only real fun their fans ever had was when management went out and bought them some big-name players, such as Reggie.

Otherwise, this organization is nothing more than the Chicago Cubs, with beach balls.

Mark McGwire has never looked better.

Maybe he will have a meltdown, from all the stress of pursuing Maris, or from one of his regularly scheduled appointments with the disabled list.

But if the Angels can steal him away from Oakland, without having to give up 90 or 100 of Disney’s Dalmatians, then I say, go for it.

I’m sick of waiting for next year.