Surviving a Date With the Past

The sky swirled above center field in pools of orange and black. The wind was creeping and chilled.

The inning was the seventh. The score was tied at zero.

The date was October 12.

Happy, horrific anniversary.

Two outs from the Angels’ first World Series appearance, leading, 5-2, in the ninth inning, Mike Witt gives up a two-run homer to Don Baylor....

Yes, Saturday was that day.

The 16th anniversary of a loss that ruined a team, jinxed an organization, maybe even killed a man.

Did you remember? Did you feel it?

When the Angels took the field against the Minnesota Twins for Game 4 of the American League championship series, they were gently accompanied by the ghosts of the 1986 Angel team that blew Game 5 of this same series to the Boston Red Sox.

Then, in the seventh inning, those ghosts surrounded them.

One out from their first World Series appearance, Gary Lucas enters the game and hits Rich Gedman with his first pitch....

These Angels say they never think about the past. After they defeated the New York Yankees last weekend for the first playoff series victory in club history, everyone wrote that the past had been buried.

Maybe not quite.

Maybe the Angels still needed to survive days like Saturday, when they struggled scorelessly against Twin starter Brad Radke before putting runners on first and third with none out in the seventh.

Maybe they needed to overcome what happened next.

When Garret Anderson popped up the first pitch to third base for an out.

Just as Doug DeCinces did with bases loaded in the ninth inning 16 years ago.

Still one out away, Donnie Moore allows a two-run homer to Dave Henderson to give Boston a 6-5 lead....

Ben Weber was talking about 1986.

“I bet you half the people in the clubhouse never heard of Donnie Moore,” he said.

Being the honest sort, he then shook his head.

“Well, OK, of course we’ve heard of him, it’s impossible not to hear of him,” he admitted.

But there is a difference between hearing, and listening.

Seventh inning, one out, the Angels showed again how all this history stuff goes in one red earhole and out the other.

Because stepping to the plate after Anderson was Troy Glaus.

A man who once used DeCinces as an agent and dated his daughter.

A man who lined a fastball to left field to score the game’s first run, giving the Angels a lead they would never lose in a 7-1 victory.

It would be wonderfully ironic, if it wasn’t so doggone weird.

Moore allows an 11th-inning sacrifice fly to Henderson that gives the Red Sox an eventual 7-6 victory ....

In the top of the eighth Saturday, with the Angels leading, 2-0, there was one more obstacle.

Remember when Witt was replaced by Gary Lucas despite retiring the last batter he faced? Well, John Lackey was replaced by Francisco Rodriguez despite retiring his last batter.

And, while Lucas hit a batter, Rodriguez hit a bat. He allowed Doug Mientkiewicz to knock a blooper that fell out of diving Darin Erstad’s glove in center field for a double.

At which point, I did a terrible thing, but I couldn’t help it. The roaring racket and palpable drama lifted me to my feet and over to Tim Mead, the Angels’ classy, long-suffering vice president who has endured it all.

“Know what today is?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “Known it all day.”

“A little worried right now?” I asked.

“Different time,” he said, still smiling. “Different team.”

And how.

Rodriguez blew away the next three hitters, not allowing another ball to leave the infield.

By the time the Twins batted in the ninth, when the memories of Moore would have been even greater, the Angels had scored five more runs and made the entire thing irrelevant.

And today the Angels lead the AL championship series three games to one, which will have more people talking because that was their lead before that fateful day in 1986.

But now that they’ve survived the Yankees and survived the anniversary, does anybody really believe they can’t survive this?

“I swear, I didn’t know that today was the anniversary, that’s the first I’ve heard of it,” said Joe Maddon, the longtime Angel coach and one of three people in the clubhouse who was around in 1986. “Honestly, that has nothing to do with now.”

Honestly, I think we finally believe him.

“I was horsebleep,” says Moore after the loss, which sends the series back to Boston, where the Angels lose the next two games and are eliminated. Two years later, Donnie Moore commits suicide.

Sixteen years ago Saturday, horses with mounted police were paraded onto the field in the ninth inning for the celebration that never happened.

On Saturday, for the first time since then, horses were paraded again. Only this time, they waited until after the final out.

*

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

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Leading Question

Since baseball’s championship series expanded to seven games in 1985, 19 teams have taken a 3-1 series lead. Only three of those teams have lost. A look:

*--* 1985 ALCS

*--*

Kansas City defeated Toronto

*--* 1986 ALCS

*--*

Boston defeated Angels

*--* 1996 NLCS

*--*

Atlanta defeated St. Louis