Angels Can’t Help but Know They Are Being Watched

A solitary man, with perfectly white hair and a perfectly straight back, sat in the corner of Diablo Stadium on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday.

He seemed to pay no attention to the hundreds of empty seats surrounding him. It didn’t seem to bother him that he was watching only Angel pitchers and catchers playing catch and trying to stretch out the off-season kinks in muscles that had been happily at rest for five months.

The man would watch, he would write. Watch, write. Watch, write. His rhythm was as natural and predictable as the pitchers’ windup, his concentration as intense as a man taking a no-hitter into the ninth inning.

It took two hellos and a gentle tap on the shoulder before the man turned around. His name, he said, is Everett C. Templeman. His age, he said, is 77. His hometown, he said, is Las Vegas. His wife, he says, accepts this little springtime ritual.

“Since I’ve retired,” Templeman says on a beautifully sunny day where the grass is so green that the world seems Irish, “I pick out one team every spring that I think I will like and I come to watch that team in spring training. This year, the Angels intrigue me. When I heard they signed Mo Vaughn, I told my wife that very evening that I would be coming to see the Angels this spring.”

Expectations.

This baseball fan from Las Vegas, this fan of no particular team--”I just love the game,” Templeman says, “just the game.”--has formed expectations for this 1999 Angel team.

“Division winners, I think,” Templeman says, “at least.”

Expectations.

Troy Percival, the Angels’ fierce relief pitcher, spits out the word as if clearing his mouth of some bad taste.

“What expectations?” Percival says. “I haven’t heard any expectations.”

Well, Troy, you know how the Angels were only a couple of games from beating Texas in the American League West last season and now they’ve added Vaughn, one of the most fearsome hitters and most intense clubhouse personalities in the game, and Tim Belcher, who might not be Randy Johnson but who has been a steady and reliable pitcher and how many of those, really, are around the league? And, besides, that, the Angels didn’t give up anything to get these two. Addition without subtraction.

As Manager Terry Collins says, “We should be able to pick up a couple of games with those two guys.”

But Percival insists.

“I haven’t heard any expectations, seen any predictions,” he says. “I come into every season with the expectation that we are going to win. I felt this way last year. I don’t feel any differently this year than last year.”

In his eyes, though, you can see it. Percival has them.

Expectations.

Collins embraces them. Embraces them enthusiastically. Then embraces them cautiously.

Well, yes, of course, Collins says, “There should be a difference in the way people look at this team. I understand there is a lot of talk about us and there should be. When you add players the caliber of Vaughn and Belcher, the attitudes about us will be different.”

As if realizing that what he is saying might sound cocky or maybe even crazy, Collins is quick to continue. To talk about how “this isn’t even the end of February yet,” and to explain how “things could happen, to us or to somebody else,” that no one can possibly anticipate now.

Collins doesn’t have to mention how in 1996 there were high expectations followed by a big, fat fizzle.

But there is an optimism in the even-keeled manager that he can’t keep down. For as soon as Collins hints about how bad things could happen, he also finishes that thought by saying, “It might be the law of averages that the breaks go our way.”

In other words, maybe Darin Erstad won’t go down with a bad hamstring in the midst of a manic division title race in August and September. Maybe Ivan Rodriguez of Texas will be the one instead.

And Collins is eager to remind that his Angels have added Vaughn and Belcher without having lost Jim Edmonds or Garret Anderson, “because we really like those guys on our team.” He doesn’t say that he might really like to be able to use them as trade material for, say, another reliable relief pitcher or something. But the truth is that the Angels do have some other cards to play.

It’s not as if they are the New York Yankees and can pick up Roger Clemens on a whim, but the Angels do have depth now, in case of injuries. And tradable depth even if there aren’t injuries.

“This is a good place to be,” Collins says.

He has just brushed his teeth and his mouth is fresh. There has been no El Nino this winter so the field is in fine shape, not mushy from wild rains as it was last season. Fresh and fine, the condition of the Angels too.

And Templeman sits in the corner, hat pulled down over his forehead to fight off the sun, scribbling notes on his pad.

Expectations.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com.