Glaus Puts College Days Behind Him

It’s not the shoes, so it must be the underwear. How else to explain Angel third baseman Troy Glaus’ recent offensive surge, which included a double and a home run in the Angels’ 5-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins before an Edison Field crowd of 17,003 Tuesday night?

As Glaus was getting dressed before Monday night’s game, Mo Vaughn glanced at the former UCLA standout’s sparkling Bruin-gold sliding shorts and tore into Glaus.

“Get that UCLA [stuff] outta here!” Vaughn screamed. “Put away the yearbook. This is the big leagues, kid.”

A somewhat chagrined Glaus peeled off the gold shorts, pulled on some white ones and got two hits against the Twins. As superstitious as players are, there was no doubt what shorts Glaus wore Tuesday night.

“The white ones,” he said.

Glaus may burn his old UCLA shorts the way he’s hitting now--he doubled to left and scored on Andy Sheets’ sacrifice fly in the third inning, and he blasted his seventh home run in the seventh to help the Angels remain 6 1/2 games behind the first-place Texas Rangers.

Garret Anderson ended an 0-for-15 skid with an RBI double in the fourth, Todd Greene had an RBI single in the fourth and Randy Velarde added a home run in the eighth to back the superb pitching of Ken Hill.

Hill (2-4) came within one strike of a shutout before Corey Koskie’s home run on a full-count pitch with two outs in the ninth. He gave up five hits, walked three and struck out six in 8 2/3 innings, throwing 123 pitches before giving way to Mark Petkovsek.

His only real trouble came in the fifth, which he opened with walks to Doug Mientkiewicz and Javier Valentin, the Twins’ eighth and ninth hitters. Hill got Todd Walker to ground into a 4-6-3 double play and Denny Hocking on a comebacker to end the inning.

“His command was good, his fastball was good, he threw his slider and splitter behind in the count,” Manager Terry Collins said. “That’s the Ken Hill we know. He’s had two or three games where he’s pitched well enough to win. It’s nice to see him get a few runs to work with.”

Glaus deserves credit for two of those runs after a two-for-two night that raised his average to .239, hardly all-star material but enough to maintain his job security.

Heading into the weekend, it appeared Glaus might be on the verge of a demotion to triple-A Edmonton after going 9 for 85 with 27 strikeouts and three RBIs in 23 games from April 30 to last Thursday, dropping his average from .359 to .226.

The only thing that seemed to be keeping Glaus in the big leagues was his Gold Glove-caliber defense, which coaches believe has saved the Angels several runs per week.

“The hard part to figure out is what’s best for the team and what’s best for him,” Collins said of Glaus, 22. “This kid has a bright future. We want to make sure he keeps moving forward, not backward.”

They may not be Goliath-sized steps, but Glaus finally made some forward progress in the last four games, beginning with his two-run homer against Kansas City Saturday night.

Glaus had two hits in four at-bats against Minnesota Monday night, his first multi-hit game since May 1, and he followed that with another two-hit game Tuesday night.

“Troy is swinging the bat much better,” Collins said. “He’s not really trying to muscle the ball. He’s shortened his swing, changed his stance a bit, and he’s seeing the ball well. He’s taking some pitches down and away that he was swinging at 10 days ago and hitting the pitches he should hit.”

Glaus’ fifth-inning walk was impressive, too. Glaus laid off a Benj Sampson breaking ball just off the outside corner, the kind of pitch he’d been lunging at and trying to pull for much of May.

“I’ve been pretty tough on myself,” Glaus said. “I’m a perfectionist by nature--everyone in here is. I’ve put a lot of hard work into this, and the benefits are starting to come. But you play this game to be consistent. There will be days when you don’t get any hits, but I can’t let the lows get too low.”