One Sweet Victory Makes This Journey Worthwhile

I am sitting in the Edison Field press box. The Thunder Stix are still pounding, the champagne has begun to spray in the clubhouse and Tim Salmon, a rock of stability amid so many years of instability, is circling the diamond, holding the American League championship trophy over his head, symbolically capturing the pinnacle moment in 41 years of Angel history.

For someone who was there at the start (and dare I acknowledge that march of time?), for someone who was sitting in the bar at the Lord Baltimore Hotel the night before the Angels played their first game in 1961 and saw Paul Richards, the Oriole manager, slip an arm around Gene Autry’s shoulders and say, “Cowboy, I love you, but starting tomorrow we’re going to kick your ... ,” I can’t help but feel a sweep of emotions seep through the cynicism and dispassion that is the byproduct of being present for all or part of every Angel season.

The boss, of course, won’t like that.

He won’t like his national baseball writer acknowledging a degree of emotion, being touched personally by this Angel accomplishment, but it is difficult to avoid.

It is like Jim Fregosi, once a teenage Angel shortstop on his way to becoming an All-Star and ultimately managing the Angels to their first division title in 1979, was saying before joining Buck Rodgers and Bobby Knoop in delivering the ceremonial first pitch Sunday. He said that for anyone who has ever been involved with the Angels, who is familiar with the heartaches and the mismanagement and the improbable litany of injuries and deaths, that “seeing them reach the World Series for the first time is special, indeed.”

It is difficult to escape the lure of this 2002 team and its displays of heart and fortitude, traits absent in so many other Angel summers. It is difficult to avoid seeing -- in players like Shawn Wooten, Ben Weber, Brendan Donnelly and the clutch Scott Spiezio -- the same frustrations of so many of those Angel summers and how their spirits finally came together this year.

I mean, how can you not be drawn to the personality of a team that the late Bill Rigney, who almost led the Angels to a 1962 pennant, or Gene Mauch, who came so close in the controversial playoffs of 1982 and ‘86, would have admired (as Mauch has said he does). This team has the same grass-stained passion and fundamental approach that mirrors their own teams.

No, the Angels of 2002 do not have the zany characters that the Angels of ’62 did.

After all, Rigney liked to say that if they had won the pennant that year he would never have been able to find all of his celebrating players in time for the World Series. The 2002 team may not have a Bo Belinsky or Dean Chance keeping the manager up all night with his escapades, may not have a Leon Wagner or Art Fowler or Lee Thomas turning every bus ride into a comedy hour, but who can’t admire the intensity of Troy Percival, the hustle of David Eckstein, the confidence of Jarrod Washburn, the sweet stroke of Garret Anderson, the electricity of Francisco Rodriguez, the leadership of Darin Erstad?

Who can’t be attracted to how it has all come together under Mike Scioscia and his staff?

I make no apologies.

It is the price of 41 years on the beat, of barren Angel seasons in the stands and standings.

Now, the camera of the mind is blurred by a sea of red.

Now, I see Adam Kennedy bring equality to that trade for Jim Edmonds and mimic Mr. October with three home runs.

Now, I see the Angels wipe out the Minnesota Twins in five games after wiping out the New York Yankees in four, batting around every weekend in this postseason.

Now, I see Percival (and wouldn’t it have been different for Mauch in ’82 and ’86 if he had been blessed with Scioscia’s bullpen?) put a bottle of champagne on the Edison Field mound and I see Salmon with that championship trophy. How can it be anything but an emotional tug and the highlight moment for a franchise that so often changed managers, general managers and philosophies, one year building from within, the next cornering the market on free agents, allowing Nolan Ryan to leave, bringing in Reggie Jackson, always trying to “win one for the cowboy before it was too late.”

Well, it didn’t happen for the cowboy, whose resiliency and passion always seemed to overshadow the fact that he may not have always had a firm hand on his organization’s reins, but the Angels won this year. They received their championship trophy from an honorary American League president named Jackie Autry because they got serious about stability under former general manager Bill Bavasi and scouting director Bob Fontaine Jr., drafting and developing the nucleus of the current team despite financial restrictions during the last years of the Autry regime and the current Disney ownership.

Bill Stoneman, who succeeded Bavasi in 1999, has enhanced the nucleus, and gone now are 16 years of ghosts, 41 years of frustration. The Parade of Agony is over. On Sunday, Tom Prince, who was to be the last batter of the game, hit a foul ball that caromed into the press box and was rolling on the floor when I picked it up.

Colleagues called it the appropriate souvenir, my 41-year reward, from Baltimore in April of ’61 to Anaheim in October of 2002. I don’t agree.

Sorry boss, but my reward was Salmon with that trophy.