An Exorcise of Futility

The Angels tied the score on a ball that skipped between a second baseman’s legs.

That was for Bobby Grich.

The Angels tied it again after a beach ball floated into center field, stopping play, diverting a pitcher’s attention moments before allowing a bomb.

That was for Brian Downing.

The Angels scored the go-ahead run on a bloop that a charging center fielder and retreating second baseman turned into a blooper.

That was for all of them, bless their halo-ed, hallowed souls.

That was for the hundreds of Angels and millions of fans whom fate teased and tortured for 41 years of death, disillusionment and Dave Henderson.

On Saturday, the baseball gods paid them all back.

With interest.

With a four-hour roar that turned Orange County red.

With Troy Percival thrusting his fist into the air as fireworks crashed and players danced and demons fled.

With a new sentence, never before written but engraved forever at 4:57 p.m. in a strange new sports capital whose gentle residents are today pinching their Armanis and clicking their Guccis.

The Angels win a playoff series.

And they win it by beating arguably the greatest playoff team in baseball history.

Angels 9, Yankees 5, jinxes zilch.

Angels win the American League divisional series three games to one, curses get swept.

Angels leave Edison Field for the American League championship series in either Oakland or Minnesota, 1986 is thrown out the door behind them.

“How do I feel?” a beaming Tim Salmon asked afterward, soaked in beer and champagne and memories. “How does it look like I feel?”

It wasn’t a World Series championship, but afterward they partied like one, the rock-thumping clubhouse lined in plastic and cigar smoke and relief.

Salmon was throwing teammates in a bucket of ice. Percival was chasing them around with beers. Everyone was sucking on stogies and draping arms around one another and posing for photos, almost like a collection of new fathers.

Which, come to think of it, they were.

“We never cared about history,” said Scott Spiezio, he of the red whiskers and pastel-smooth swing. “We’re trying to rewrite history.”

It started appropriately Saturday, with a ceremonial first pitch that was oddly and perfectly caught by a pitcher.

It was former hard-luck shortstop Gary DiSarcina throwing to Percival, who hugged his old friend and waved his cap and walked him off to a standing ovation.

“This has always been about more than just us,” Percival said later. “All those players who have been through those hard times, they are right there with us.”

The players were introduced, as usual, to the opening strains of “Spirit in the Sky.”

With every cuticle-biting game of this series, that song made more sense.

The teams then took the field and ... nothing.

The Angels looked as tight as they did while taking five days to clinch a playoff spot. Quick plate appearances against David Wells. Shaky fastballs from Jarrod Washburn.

The Yankees were inches from a three-run homer when Robin Ventura’s ball hit the top of the wall in right-center field. They were inches from another homer when Alfonso Soriano’s line drive whacked into the wall in the left-field corner.

By the time they took the field in the bottom of the fifth, the Angels were lucky to be trailing only 2-1.

But it was the Yankees who felt lucky. It was the Yankees, with aging pitching and undisciplined hitting, who spent the entire series looking as if they were trailing.

Said Derek Jeter: “They were a better team. They had their way with us.”

Said Darin Erstad: “We have been through enough tough times that when we have a chance to do something special we’re not going to lay down and die.”

So the Angels promptly executed baseball’s best inning of postseason offense in 73 years.

Ten hits that landed everywhere, 41 years of frustration sprinkled across the field like so much fertilizer, Yankee Manager Joe Torre freezing on the bench, his team wilting on the field.

In the end, the Angels didn’t just beat the Yankees, they ran them out of town.

In the end, the 45,067 balloon-banging fans didn’t just cheer, they derisively chanted, “Go Home, Yankees” in the same annoying clap pattern used in the Bronx for “Let’s Go, Yankees.”

Mystique and Aura have been replaced by a couple of surfer chicks named Savvy and Steel.

“I don’t believe in curses, I don’t believe in mystique, I don’t believe in any of that stuff,” said Percival. “I believe only in good baseball.”

Here’s a series worth of good baseball:

The Angel hitters were retired 1-2-3 only seven times in 34 innings.

The Angel fielders gave up only one unearned run.

The Angel pitchers, despite a 6.17 team ERA, held leadoff hitter and MVP candidate Soriano to two lousy hits.

A final step toward a World Series awaits.

A final step from a world of hurt is completed.

“We old guys never talked about the curse, because we never wanted the young guys to listen,” Salmon said, pointing his champagne bottle out toward a field swept clean of everything but wide-eyed belief. “Today, finally, we’re burying those ghosts.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.