Fans Watching the Wrong Game

The first two guys who retrieved foul balls Friday night at Edison Field were holding cell phones to their ears.

How can we expect to have a foaming-at-the-mouth, I’ll-kick-your-butt-you-Dodgers/Angels-rooting-wienie kind of rivalry if you people can’t put down your cell phones for an evening?

It was Game 1 of a three-game battle between our Southern California baseball teams. Three hours before the game, on a Los Angeles sports talk station, the bombastic host was bragging that 40,000 Dodgers fans would be at Edison Field and that some of those 40,000 Dodger fans should stop at a market in Placentia on their way to the game. It wasn’t clear why they should stop, other than to meet a radio talk show host, but apparently many of those Dodger fans lost their way, or at least their voices, on the way to the Ed. Because the Dodger fans were awfully quiet.

That’s how it is, though, when the team you were sure was going to be winning a pennant is 4 1/2 games out of first place in the division.

There was a sellout, actually--43,619, fifth-largest crowd in stadium history. Sometimes it was hard to tell, but there seemed to be more Angel fans than Dodger rooters. People were in all the seats, but you had no sense of being at an important sporting event.

All during the game, which was won by the Angels, 12-5, there was talking going on, but the chatter floated above the field, as if the game being played was nothing more than a bad lounge band in a hotel bar. Pay no attention to Troy Glaus singling in two runs in the Angels’ three-run first inning, folks. Just go on about your chit-chat.

You could find more excitement on the concourse. That’s where a man wearing a Dodger jersey and a man wearing an Angel jersey shared the view on a miniature television. They were watching the Laker-Portland game, each man with one hand on the antenna, trying to get a clear picture.

In New York you find Met and Yankee fans with their hands on each other’s throats. Here you find Dodger and Angel fans joined in grief over the Lakers when the basketball team was losing, 42-34, late in the second quarter.

“Let’s go watch the baseball game,” one said to the other. “Maybe if I turn this off it will bring some luck to the Lakers.”

Quit watching the Lakers, people. This was a fun game.

Considering there were absolutely no expectations for the Angels, considering that it seemed more likely that Mo Vaughn would have been traded to a contender by now then that the Angels would be a contender, considering that the Dodgers, with the acquisition of Orange County’s own Shawn Green, the Tustin kid who didn’t consider coming to Anaheim, was supposed to be the first-place team here, Angel fans had a whole lot to cheer about last night.

And they did. Sometimes.

When Dodger shortstop Alex Cora tried to run over Angel catcher Bengie Molina at the plate, and when Benji Gil’s throw to Molina was dead-on and when Molina jumped up, arms pumped, baseball firmly in glove while Cora was being called out, there was lots of noise.

When Adam Kennedy, stuck in a slump and knocked down to eighth in the order, cracked a two-run home run in the third inning, there was lots of noise.

When Dodger second baseman Mark Grudzielanek sent a fly ball deep into left in the third inning there was lots of noise. It was all provided by Tommy Lasorda, who screamed “Goodbye.” But the ball was caught and not much more was heard from Tommy in the back of the press box.

But when Paul LoDuca, the Dodger catcher who was called up yesterday from Albuquerque, got his first major league hit of the year and made it a three-run home run that cut the Angels’ lead from 6-1 to 6-4, there was more angst than excitement. The Lakers were down 11 in the third quarter.

“Did somebody do something?” Paul from Artesia asked. Paul was standing at a TV in the concourse with two dozen other people. Paul had been given his ticket, a good one five rows up from the Dodger dugout, so he didn’t want to reveal his last name. “My friend wouldn’t be happy if he knew I was watching the Lakers game,” Paul said. “That new guy hit a home run? Wow. When the Lakers are done, I’m back in my seat.”

There was no Angel-Dodger rivalry Friday. Any would-be rivals were united in despair. Maybe some other time for baseball.

Since there were fireworks to be enjoyed postgame, most of the full-house crowd stayed till the end. Some of them put down their cell phones and most of them came to their seats after the Lakers had lost. The Dodger fans accepted the loss well and were happy to see Disney’s fireworks. The Angel fans politely accepted the win and were happy to see Disney’s fireworks. So everyone went home happy.

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