Fixed Star

The deal was all but done in 1988. The Angels, in need of a productive third baseman, were on the verge of sending a young, rough-around-the-edges pitcher named Chuck Finley, infielder Jack Howell and a minor leaguer to the Boston Red Sox for Wade Boggs.

But the Red Sox wanted one last look at the lanky left-hander with the lively but erratic arm, so they sent a scout to Anaheim to check out what was to have been Finley’s last start for the Angels.

“The next game, I got one guy out and gave up something like 13 hits and nine runs,” Finley said. “I asked [then-manager] Gene Mauch why they waved off the deal. He said the Red Sox didn’t think anyone could overcome that outing.”

As Boston fans would smirk, it wasn’t the only time the Red Sox had underestimated a pitcher.

Not only did Finley overcome that outing, he went on to become one of the top pitchers in Angel history. He is a workhorse who is so rugged he was drilled by three line drives last season, including one so vicious he thought his pitching elbow “had exploded,” and didn’t miss a start; who is so tough he once pitched an inning with a broken bone in his left wrist, and who is so resilient he shut out a potent Cleveland Indian lineup for 7 1/3 innings last season despite severe flulike symptoms.

Finley, the 36-year-old staff ace, is beginning his 14th season with the Angels, having set club records for wins (153), starts (346), innings pitched (2,461 2/3) and games pitched (403).

He has been on the disabled list only four times, because of foot injuries in 1989 and ’92 and because of freak injuries in 1997, when he was struck in the face by a bat in spring training and when he slipped and broke his wrist while backing up home plate in August.

Though his most effective pitch is the forkball, which can be extremely taxing on the elbow, Finley has never had arm trouble.

“Dr. Yocum keeps looking at me, licking his lips,” Finley said of Angel team physician Lewis Yocum, whose career has been built on pitchers’ shoulders and elbows. “I keep saying, ‘Not me. No condo in Vail for you this year.’ ”

There he goes again with his nutty quotes. Finley’s homespun, Louisiana-bred sense of humor has kept reporters--and fans who follow the Angels--in stitches for more than a decade.

In 1996, he sized up an underachieving team that trailed the division leader by nine games in early August and said: “One of these days the cops are gonna come and arrest this team for loitering.”

And summing up an incredible rash of injuries last season: “We’ve had so many X-rays you could cover the field with them, stick them together and make a tarp.”

Finley is one of the most entertaining players in baseball. But beneath the stand-up routine is a pitcher who gets up at 7 a.m. after each start to work with a personal trainer, a tireless veteran who is in perpetual motion at the park, constantly exercising in an effort to coax more quality innings from his 6-foot-6, 226-pound frame, and whose between-starts workouts have become legendary among his teammates for their intensity.

This work ethic was instilled as Finley toiled on the 200-acre family nursery in West Monroe, La., where young Chuck labored long hours planting trees and driving tractors, and he never lost it.

“I’m a grinder--the sun doesn’t shine every day, and you’ve got to learn to work when it’s raining,” Finley said. “Guys always say, ‘Damn, you’re never in the clubhouse.’ You can’t get anything done on the couch. You’re not going to get anywhere by holding your hand out.”

One of the words Angel Manager Terry Collins uses to describe Finley is carefree, but don’t take that to mean Finley doesn’t care.

“I don’t know if outside people realize how hard this guy works, how hard he competes,” Collins said. “People don’t always see the emotion that burns inside him.”

They did last Sept. 22, when Finley tore into his teammates with a profanity-laced tirade after a 9-1 loss to Texas that dropped the Angels two games behind the Rangers with five to play.

“Someone said something about it being another September collapse, and Chuck said he was tired of it, that talk was cheap, that we should go out and do something about it,” Collins said. “Only he used a different decibel and a few different words.

“If anybody ever questioned his desire, that brought to the surface what’s inside this guy on a daily basis.”

Finley’s frustrations spilled over at the end of 1998, the third time in four years the Angels finished second in the American League West.

Skeptical of the Angels’ commitment to improve the team, Finley, on the final weekend of the season, suggested the Angels might “trade me for a couple of prospects, and I can go pitch in the playoffs somewhere.”

Those sentiments disappeared with the winter signings of free-agent first baseman Mo Vaughn and pitcher Tim Belcher.

“I’ve seen a lot of big-name free agents walk through these halls in the winter and go in one door and out the other,” said Finley, who because of upper-back spasms will make only his third spring start today. “They said they were going to help us this year . . . and they did.”

Finley says this team has a legitimate chance of winning the division title for the first time since 1986, the season in which a 24-year-old reliever jumped from Class-A Quad City to the big leagues and made a significant contribution, going 3-1 with a 3.30 ERA in 25 games, to a team that was one strike away from reaching its first World Series.

Geez, has it been that long? The Angels have gone through 11 managers or interim managers (Mauch, Cookie Rojas, Moose Stubing, Doug Rader, Buck Rodgers, John Wathan, Bobby Knoop, Marcel Lachemann, John McNamara, Joe Maddon and Terry Collins), four general managers (Mike Port, Dan O’Brien, Whitey Herzog and Bill Bavasi) and two owners (Gene Autry, the Walt Disney Co.) during Finley’s tenure in Anaheim.

He is the only remaining player link to 1986, a year Finley remembers “floating through” after his head-spinning experience that May 25.

“We were in Cedar Rapids, fixin’ to play in front of about 400 people on a field whose lights weren’t as strong as most porch lights, and my manager told me I was getting promoted,” Finley said.

“I said, ‘Where?’ He said, ‘New York.’ I didn’t think we had a team there. I thought our teams were in Edmonton and Midland. Then he said I was going to the big leagues. My knees began to wobble.”

Finley hopped on a plane “with my Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots and about $60 in my pocket,” and the next night he was standing on baseball’s most hallowed grounds, Yankee Stadium.

“Reggie Jackson came up to me and said, ‘You did pretty good at [triple-A] Edmonton, huh?’ ” Finley said. “I said I did pretty good, but not at Edmonton. At Quad City. He said, ‘Oh. . . .’

“Ron Guidry [a Louisiana native] called from the Yankee clubhouse to congratulate me on making the big leagues. He was a guy I always watched and admired. He changed my life that day.”

Finley remembers thinking after 1986, “Wow, we’re always going to have great teams where the starting pitcher goes eight innings, the closer saves it, and we go to the playoffs,” he said.

Not quite. Although the Angels came close in 1995, ’97 and ‘98, Finley is still looking for his second playoff experience, his first trip to the World Series.

He says he has “felt as good as I ever have these last five years,” but he knows time is running out. Finley had a chance to leave as a free agent in 1996 and even traveled to Tampa, Fla., to meet Yankee owner George Steinbrenner.

Had he accepted New York’s offer, Finley would have a World Series ring or two, but he has no regrets about playing his entire career for one team, a rarity in today’s transient baseball world.

“I’ve always been happy here,” Finley said. “As great as it must be in New York, I always thought doing that on this team would be better. I might be saying that when I’m 60 too. The year after I leave, they’ll probably win it all. That would really tick me off.”