Johnson is Ready to Look Over Locals

If the Disney checkbook doesn’t pull a groin, sprain an ankle, injure an Achilles, then the Angels are in a baseball race where it’s a fair fight for them.

By making real, legitimate, not easily dismissed financial offers to big-time free agents Mo Vaughn and Randy Johnson, the Angels are winning more respect, gaining more national credibility than the way they hung in the American League West race until the final weekend of the season even though their best players were hurt and their main competition, the Rangers, had spent big and wisely to make a final push.

Sometimes it seems as if everything is turned on its head in baseball. It’s not how you play but how you pay. A team must first become a serious player in the free-agent market and then it can be taken seriously elsewhere.

Ownership will be taken more seriously in its own clubhouse and by its own players when money is spent. The Rangers bubbled with enthusiasm and appreciation that their bosses felt it important enough to buy players like pitcher Todd Stottlemyre for three months. It mattered.

A team becomes easier to manage. The fans become sympathetic instead of antagonistic. Angel fans never warmed to the overachieving team presented to them this season. They are tired of overachieving. They want to see more.

And, believe it or not, the Angels haven’t been dismissed yet in this post-postseason race.

The Angels pop up on ESPN every night. They are mentioned in daily baseball columns around the country, in the same way as the Yankees and Braves, Orioles and Dodgers.

Today, the Angels are bringing in Johnson, the giant, bomb-throwing No. 1 pitcher that the organization so badly needs. Rolling out the red carpet, almost literally word has it, by decorating a fancy locker with Johnson’s name on it and everything.

If this strikes you as almost collegiate, if you wonder, will Disney offer Minnie Mouse as Johnson’s escort to all the hot hangouts? That’s kind of what this baseball off-season has become.

Recruiting time.

Because if Johnson signs with the Angels, then the baseball world knows the Angels are serious. They are contenders. They are then attractive to other baseball players. Disney also has told everybody in its organization, in Southern California, in the country that the Angels expect to compete at the highest level, that they don’t plan to throw out excuses about why they can’t compete. There’s a perception being created, a message being sent.

And obviously this message needs to be sent.

We need look only at Vaughn to see that.

Vaughn, the portly, powerful first baseman who is universally respected as a positive clubhouse motivator and instigator, turned down what was supposed to be the last, final offer from his team, the Boston Red Sox, and the team and Vaughn have said that this particular recruitment is finished. That has been about a week now and, guess what?

The rest of the world hasn’t filled up Vaughn’s voice mailbox with offers. The Angels have. The Angels called right away, even before the Red Sox made their pitch to keep a man who had said he would prefer to stay in Boston and who is pretty darn loved in Boston, which is a red-hot baseball town.

And still, Vaughn hasn’t signed with the Angels.

This could end up looking very bad for the Angels, say, if Vaughn turns up back in Boston for an offer less than what the Angels made. That is being dissed. But Vaughn might be in dangerous territory here too. What if the Angels sign Johnson for huge money in the next couple of days? What if the Angels say to Vaughn, hey, forget it, you took too long? Then it’s Vaughn who gets dissed.

In any case, the Angels are still playing this game, still playing hard, in a way they haven’t played since Disney took over.

“Whether we sign any of these guys or not,” Angel Manager Terry Collins said from Florida, “we can hold our head up. Everything that was offered to Mo, that came from the top, not me, and when I read those numbers I was really impressed. If Mo decides to go someplace else for whatever reason, I know that we absolutely tried and that the organization has gone above and beyond.”

Collins says he is not nervous, that he is not biting his fingernails to the quick or anything, that he is only evaluating the talent he knows he has right now. But then Collins said that, yes, he might be making a phone call to Anaheim today just to check on Johnson. Collins had already made a trip to Arizona to talk to Johnson, to do a little selling, a little recruiting.

And that’s the thing here. There is no reason why the Angels shouldn’t be competing. They have the weather, the nicely rehabbed stadium, the regional cable broadcast situation, the nice lifestyle available. Why shouldn’t the Angels step up and compete for all the Randy Johnsons, Mo Vaughns and Kevin Browns every year?

Collins says he has spoken to some Angel players and that “to a man, these guys are excited that this organization is willing to step up the way it has.”

It’s what a manager would expect from his players, that they step up. And it’s not wrong that the players expect the same from ownership.

Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com.