Last Out No Relief for Angels

It’s over, finally. And yet it’s just beginning.

The Anaheim Angels beat the Texas Rangers, 1-0, Sunday at Edison Field, the 70th win in a season when 90 or more had been the optimistic predictions.

Mo Vaughn, the charismatic, bombastic $80-million man, was supposed to be the guy to push the Angels to a playoff berth and instead he became just another victim of the Angel curse. If you believe in such a thing.

While the Rangers hurried out of the stadium, eager to go to New York and begin the American League playoffs against the Yankees, the Angels lingered in their clubhouse, shaking hands, exchanging phone numbers, packing up bottles of nutritional supplements and gym bags full of shoes and shirts, of dirty laundry and horrible memories.

Here are some mental postcards from the lost season.

Terry Collins, hands shaking and sobbing uncontrollably, on the day of his resignation as manager of the Anaheim Angels.

Bill Bavasi, gray-faced and stoic until, finally, he cried too on the day he relinquished his general manager’s position.

Vaughn, sounds of his first-ever standing ovation as an Angel still kicking around in his head as he lumbered off to make his first play as an Anaheim Angel, catching an innocent pop foul. And then he reached the first step. It was a doozy. Clunk went Vaughn. Clunk, clunk down the steps of the visitors dugout. Ouch went Vaughn, his ankle turned, his season turned into an offensive wasteland. In the first inning of the first game of the new Mo Vaughn $80-million era.

Gary DiSarcina walking into a coach’s bat. Day one of spring training. Crack. The sound of DiSarcina’s bone breaking.

Tim Salmon, giddy to be healthy again, hot as a pepper with his early-season bat. Trying to make a sliding catch in the outfield. Bending his wrist in a way a wrist shouldn’t bend.

What is it you want to remember about the 1999 Angels?

The injuries, the resignations? The players’ complaining, the two best performers being traded, the towel being thrown in shortly after midseason? What? What to remember?

How about the news that Disney, the mega-entertainment giant that owns the Angels and the NHL’s Mighty Ducks, had put its major league sports teams up for sale? A billionaire named Henry Nicholas III, a man who had made his own fortune by starting the Irvine company called Broadcom, was going to make the Angels and Ducks part of a vast, futuristic interactive sports conglomeration that would include an indoor sports palace filled with rock climbing and wave pools for surfing and mountains for snowboarding.

But, oh, never mind, Nicholas and his business pals said last week. We don’t want the Angels after all. At least not a majority ownership of them, not so much of them that we would have to be in charge of hirings and firings and paying the salaries.

So now what?

“There’s an absolute sense of uncertainty,” interim manager Joe Maddon said Sunday in his office. “It’s been an emotional season and, in that regard, it will be nice to step away from this for a while.”

Maddon took over for Collins on Sept. 3. There is no one who doesn’t think someone else will be taking over for Maddon.

But how does Disney hire a general manager and then a manager? Who will want those jobs if Disney, indeed, keeps the team up for sale?

The sign in the Angels’ souvenir store Sunday said “50% off,” and a man walking into Edison Field on Sunday afternoon muttered, “Only 50% off? They should give this stuff away to anybody who comes to this game today.” Disney is not looking to sell its sports franchises for 50% off, though. You can count on that.

It took the Angels only 1 hour, 56 minutes to beat the Rangers. This was their fastest game since Sept. 29, 1992, so we can’t say that everything about the 1999 season was awful.

Salmon hit a home run in the bottom of the seventh inning, Jarrod Washburn pitched 8 2/3 innings of five-hit shutout baseball, and most of the 23,566 fans booed when Maddon pulled Washburn after Tom Goodwin singled. At least they’d wanted to see a complete game, those 23,566 loyalists, and even that final request had been denied.

After the final out, the Angels ran onto the field. There was backslapping and butt-patting and hearty congratulations all around and even a standing ovation from the crowd. For what? The bitter end? An uncommon win? The future?

Then the Angels began throwing things into the stands. Caps and wristbands, a couple of balls, even some wadded-up tape. A symbolic purging, it seemed, of a washed up, wasted year.

An hour later, Vaughn sat in front of his locker. He rubbed his chin. He tried to explain what went wrong and it wasn’t, Vaughn said, how he had sprained his ankle on that very first day and how he had never really been able to get in shape again.

“It’s possible to have people in the clubhouse who will be leaders on a team,” Vaughn said, “but if there is not leadership at the top, all that other stuff in the clubhouse is for naught.

“These teams in the playoffs, the Yankees and Cleveland and Boston, have leaders, GMs, that know what they want and how they want to do things. George Steinbrenner, you can say what you want about George, but he knows what he wants and he gets it done. Period.”

With Disney as owner, there is the sense that the Angels are just merchandise. Programming, real estate, something to keep Anaheim, the city, spruced up for Disneyland. Is winning a baseball pennant any more important to Disney than finding a script for another blockbuster movie or inventing another cool ride for its entertainment parks?

Vaughn is right. Leadership comes from the top. So does purpose and a plan. But winning comes from someplace else. From the hearts and minds of athletes who want nothing more in the world. Who get themselves into such perfect shape that they don’t fall down steps. Who pay enough attention that they don’t walk into swinging bats. Who don’t squabble and whine.

How do you fix everything? And who will want to?

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

* THE SEASON IN PICTURES

A photographic essay of the Angels’ lost season by The Times’ Richard Hartog. A13

* OFF-SEASON ASSIGNMENT

The Angels need a general manager, a manager and a lot of team chemistry. D1