Angels Succeed In Not Being Afraid of Yankees

Nobody has to beat the Yankees over six months; they’ve already shown that nobody can. All somebody has to do is beat them over six or seven days in October. The Angels go on radar now, along with the Indians and Red Sox, as a team with a chance to do that. Not saying they can, because nobody is allowed to talk big or act rugged where the Yankees are concerned. Just believing a series like the one they recently completed gives them a shot at a first-round knockout.

Maybe that is what the Angels are really winning, playing the Yankees this way. Maybe they have played themselves into a shot. Three out of five games. Six out of 11 against the Yankees for the season. Whatever happens the rest of the way, the Angels will believe they might have a week in them when they could beat the best team in the world.

When a week is the season.

Of course the Angels won’t be facing Ryan Bradley, who had to start Game 1 of Wednesday’s doubleheader because Ramiro Mendoza could not. But they beat up Andy Pettitte pretty good Monday night and did the same to Hideki Irabu the next night. A lot of teams play the Yankees this season as if they don’t belong, as if they are the junior varsity. Not the Angels, even if they are 23 games worse than the Yankees in the standings. They have played themselves up on radar.

“It’s a shame that what you do over one week could tarnish a team’s whole season,” Randy Velarde, the old Yankee, was saying yesterday in the Angels clubhouse.

He was smiling the whole time, and so didn’t seem to be broken up about the prospects of the Angels ruining what can still be the greatest regular season in baseball history. The Angels, now looking pretty good in first place in the AL West, were about to make it four out of five against the Yankees.

In the Yankees clubhouse, Darryl Strawberry had been saying there’s always at least one team that gives you trouble, doesn’t matter who you are, what your record is.

Velarde made it to the playoffs with the Yankees in 1995, that first-round series when the Yankees led 2-0 and found out that you could lose your season even with a lead like that. Now he is 35 and playing second base for the Angels. Playing on one of those teams looking to take everything from the Yankees.

Velarde was asked what he likes the best about his own ballclub.

“We grind,” he said. “Oh, man, do these guys grind. They don’t give up, they’re mentally tough. It’s a whole team filled with gamers.”

The Angels have had gamers before and found a way to fall completely apart in September. But lately in the West it is the Rangers who have staggered. The Angels know what happened with the Yankees and the Indians last year in the playoffs, because who doesn’t? Even as a wild card, the Yankees thought they were going to win another World Series. Everything changed with a single pitch, from Mariano Rivera to Sandy Alomar Jr. There is one thing the Yankees have been saying all along:

The most dangerous first-round opponent is anybody.

But for now, the Yankees try to play their way through the worst week they have had since the first week. They lose a couple to the Twins. They lose four of five to the Angels. Five months after that first West Coast trip, the Yankees trip.

“Wait ‘till (Jeff) Nelson is healthy,” Paul O’Neill said. “Then everything around here will be just fine.”

Nelson, who has been fighting back problems for two months, is throwing again. The Yankees expect him back before the playoffs, they just don’t know when. He comes back and throws the way he was throwing before his back gave out and everything looks different in the bullpen. Mike Stanton isn’t asked to do as much and the Yankees look a lot more like the Yankees.

Derek Jeter is sitting a few feet away from O’Neill. He is asked if maybe this is a good thing, the Yankees finally getting slapped around a little.

“You know what the bottom line is?” Jeter said. “You can’t come to the ballpark every day expecting to win.”

Unsaid was this: even if you are the ’98 Yankees.

The ’98 Yankees jumped out ahead 2-0 in Wednesday’s opening-game doubleheader and Bradley jumped on the Angels with four shutout innings.

Then Reggie Williams hit a bomb to right-center in the fourth and before you knew it Bradley was gone. It was the Angels who had jumped the Yankees with three in the fourth, three more in the fifth. The Yankees came back with two in the seventh, got it to 6-4. They tried to make some noise in the ninth.

They got one base-runner in the ninth, Jeter made the last out the same as he did the night before.

That was that. Dreary game for the Yanks, dreary week, devil of a series.

Sometimes there is no connection between the summer and October. Sometimes there is. The Yankees got a split with the Angels in Game 2 of Wednesday’s doubleheader, Jeter delivering the winning run in the bottom of the ninth this time after the Yankees had blown a five-run lead. It may mean nothing by October, but the Angels aren’t afraid of the Yankees.