Injured Angels Trying to Give Teammates Their All

How can you be a good injured teammate? How do you walk the fine line between being an annoying reminder of couldas and shouldas and instead be a ray of sunshine? How do you, in only the most positive way, tell the guy taking your place that maybe he should have swung at that called third strike and not seem like a scolding mother, or worse, an obnoxious second-guesser? How do you project confidence and not depression? How do you, in other words, not be a pain in the butt?

This seems so silly, doesn’t it? Hey, you and I, we get sick, we break a bone, we need surgery, we call into the office and say, ‘Hey, boss, I’ll be back to work in July. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ And that’s that. Rehab? You do it in private. Rest? You do it on the couch in front of the TV. Keeping up with the office? Maybe, maybe not, and if you do, that’s what the computer is for. Or a call to your cubicle neighbor to check up on the gossip.

But an athlete in a team sport? It’s not so easy. Just ask an Angel. Any Angel.

OK, we exaggerate, but you could ask a lot of Angels. You could ask pitchers Jack McDowell or Jason Dickson. You could ask outfielders Tim Salmon and Jim Edmonds. You could ask infielder Gary DiSarcina. After all, if there’s anything the Angels should know about, it’s how to be injured and still be a good teammate. The Angels could hold seminars on this subject. Maybe publish a book.

“Day 1, ignore all questions about being jinxed.”

“Day 10, ignore all questions about how that two-week sprain has turned into a two-month dislocation.”

“Day 50, ignore all questions.”

Salmon is sitting at his locker on Thursday afternoon, but he’s not exactly sitting. Salmon can’t keep his feet still. His biceps twitch, the fingers of his right hand tap, tap, tap, a sort of Morse code SOS. . . . “Let me play. Let me play.”

But, no, Salmon can’t play. He turns his head a little to the left, where DiSarcina, who can’t play either, is sitting on a couch and also fidgeting, pulling at the sleeves of his T-shirt.

“I’m in a different stage than DiSar,” Salmon says. “He’s been out three, four months. He can’t stand it anymore. He can hardly stand being around here and talking to us anymore without playing. Me, I need to be here. It hasn’t been as long for me.”

Salmon, of course, has that sprained left wrist that ended up in a cast and will keep him out five weeks, maybe more. DiSarcina, of course, has that broken left forearm, the bone that was cracked by the swinging bat of a coach taking innocent warmup swings the first day of spring training.

“I’ve studied this a lot,” Salmon says. “What to do, how to behave. It’s not easy. I know how it is when you’re healthy. You don’t want to be reminded of the guys who can’t play. You don’t want to think about how things would be if the injured guys are in the lineup. It’s too easy, if you see the injured guys, to be thinking, ‘If only they were playing, we wouldn’t have lost this game or that game.’

“I’m very conscious of that and when I first got hurt I thought maybe it would be better if I wasn’t around. But then I decided that wasn’t good. I need to be here and, if I do it right, I can be a helpful teammate.”

Salmon had mentioned, specifically, being able to talk to young third baseman Troy Glaus about hitting and slumps and making adjustments to a swing, of recognizing a pitch, of just learning. And then in the bottom of the first Thursday night against the Orioles, with runners on first and second and two outs, Glaus swung and missed horribly for strike three. Glaus threw down his helmet and swatted the ground hard with his bat. In the dugout, Salmon made a point of sitting next to Glaus afterward.

McDowell, the wise and bearded pitcher, hasn’t played this year after having surgery on his right shoulder. He sits on a couch in the empty clubhouse while his teammates take batting practice. The big-screen TV is tuned to the Yankee-Red Sox game and McDowell pages through a magazine and watches the game.

It would probably be easier, he says, to rehab his shoulder at home in Rancho Santa Fe just as it might be easier for Salmon to stay home in Arizona with his family. But, McDowell says, that is not the way to be a good teammate.

“You could be working your butt off, but if you’re not around you can’t be part of the team,” McDowell says.

“Guys see Salmon, DiSar, me, Jason every day. We see them. You talk, you know what’s going on, you know the mood. You can give advice, you can listen to guys. If I weren’t here, no matter how hard I worked, when I came back I’d be a stranger. It would be no different than if I came over in a trade then. I’d have to start over.”

Salmon and McDowell spoke passionately about how they’ve come to realize the importance of figuring out a way to be with their teammates no matter what. While the name wasn’t spoken out loud, the inference was clear.

Edmonds has chosen to rehab his newly repaired shoulder in solitude. Edmonds sightings in the clubhouse are whispered about. While Salmon says that how any player handles being injured is “a personal thing,” he also says, “I can’t imagine not being here and showing the guys I want to be here.”

And when it was time for a hitters’ meeting, Salmon ran to the door. When the meeting was over and it was time for batting practice, Salmon sprinted onto the field. He couldn’t swing a bat, but he could stretch and chatter and spit and sweat.

He could be there.

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