Percival, Angels Can’t Close the Deal Against White Sox

It was Thursday night, ninth inning, the game decided, most of the fans departed.

Kari Pervell, an 8-year-old softball player from Lake Forest, was hanging over the right-field railing at Edison Field when something jumped out of her dreams and into her glove.

It was a baseball, thrown by a smiling Tim Salmon, for no other apparent reason than he is a major leaguer and she is a little girl.

That night, she slept with it.

“And you wonder why everyone here loves him?” said her father Brad, a season ticket-holder.

For seven years it has been this way.

Tim Salmon touches us when we’re not looking, amazes us when we least expect it.

For seven years, his screaming statistics muffled by his quiet countenance, Tim Salmon has been the other one.

When two baseball players in this town won Rookie of the Year awards in 1993, there was Mike Piazza and the other one.

When this town was hyped as having the two best young right fielders, there was Raul Mondesi and the other one.

When the Angels broke camp this winter with two of the biggest hitters in baseball, there was Mo Vaughn and the other one.

Jim Edmonds, Darin Erstad, Gary DiSarcina, Chuck Finley, Troy Percival and Jason Dickson have all been selected to an All-Star team.

Still waiting is the other one.

But in Tim Salmon’s seventh year, while leading the Angels in everything from clutch hitting to stability, a funny thing has happened.

The other one has become the only one.

We look up today and surprisingly discover that Tim Salmon is the only indispensable baseball player on this team, and one of only a handful in the entire game.

Seven years, and only one of them with fewer than 136 games, or 26 homers, or 88 RBIS.

Seven years, and not one contract dispute, or off-field incident, or public complaint, or controversial quote.

In the beginning, he was considered boring.

Today, we have realized he is about as boring as the tires on your car.

He has two years left on his contract. Too bad it’s not 20.

No longer should he be compared to a Mondesi, or a Piazza.

He has become more and more like Tony Gwynn, whose impact in the city of San Diego is one that Salmon can one day match in the Southland.

On the first day he ran to right field at Edison Field this season, Salmon said he surprisingly discovered the same thing.

“I’ve never really thought about it much and then, I run out and hear the fans behind me shouting things like, ‘We love you Tim’ and all sorts of things like that,” he said. “I’m thinking, ‘Man, I’ve really been here for six full years, and this is really nice.’ ”

Nicer, considering last year he couldn’t play right field because of a painful foot injury that resulted in him being the designated hitter.

Even nicer because the year before, he had difficulty concentrating on the game while helping his wife successfully battle thyroid cancer.

It is hard to tell whether his hitting in April--a team-leading .349 average with seven homers, 23 RBIs and .533 average with two out and runners in scoring position--is based more on rejuvenation or relief.

“I do appreciate everything a little more,” he said after his career-best April. “I’m realizing the importance of being part of things for as long as I have.”

Just as we should realize the importance of having him here, this ballplayer who does not drink or smoke, and rarely curses.

The reason he is not more famous is, simply, that fame takes time.

“And my time is for my family,” he said, referring to his wife and two young children.

You want proof? Ask him about movies.

“I saw two good ones this winter,” he says. “Prince of Egypt and My Favorite Martian.”

Ask him about restaurants.

“We mostly go to Peter Piper Pizza,” he says.

He once walked out of a contract negotiating session, not because he was insulted with the offer, but because he had to mow his lawn.

He won’t do a public appearance that would interfere with family time, which means he does very few. He has never appeared in a movie, or TV show, or a non-baseball commercial.

Heck, he said it took him six months to be able to look at his face on Angel-sponsored billboards.

“My poor agent,” he says, referring to Phoenix’ Ted Updike. “He finally gets a high-profile player like me, and I won’t do anything.”

This humbleness is sometimes confused with timidity. That happened this winter, when Angel officials bragged that in Mo Vaughn, they finally acquired a desperately-needed clubhouse leader.

While Salmon won’t exactly admit it, he was surely wondering. . . . then what am I?

Then he realized something that, after seven years, everyone knows.

“I am just me, I am not rah-rah, I don’t like the limelight, I’m just a baseball player,” he said. “You know, teams always need vocal leaders. But you also need the rock.”

He played another unusual game of catch before Saturday’s game, when he stood behind home plate for a first pitch from second-cousin actress Holly Hunter.

She threw a grounder that rolled far from Salmon’s glove. He simply threw her another ball with a giant comforting shrug that said, don’t worry, take your time, I’m not going anywhere.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.

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A Change of Start

Tim Salmon is leading the Angels with a .356 average. A look at his statistics in April:

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Year Avg. At-Bats HRs RBIs 1993 .254 59 5 14 1994 .232 95 3 14 1995 .262 103 6 16 1996 .281 96 3 11 1997 .244 90 3 16 1998 .279 61 7 13 1999 .349 86 7 23

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