Uhlich’s Climb Just as Remarkable as Angels’

The Angels open play in their first World Series tonight, and Kevin Uhlich is to be excused for thinking it was only yesterday he was playing catch with Nolan Ryan and Frank Tanana, convinced nothing could be better than having landed this $6-a-day summer job as the Angels’ batboy.

Well, the yesterdays have added up to 26 years. Uhlich is 45, basically in charge of the bats, balls and everything else connected with the Angels, and finding it hard, when he brings up the World Series in conversation, to believe that he isn’t dreaming.

“We’ve shared so many highs and so many lows here, but this is the ultimate,” he said with a smile. “In a personal baseball sense, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to surpass the thrill of being a batboy.”

The ladder has carried him to the title of senior vice president for business, a remarkable climb in an era when corporate structure doesn’t always reward loyalty and a remarkable climb as well given the Angels’ vast turnover since Uhlich, a year out of Anaheim High, landed that summer job.

Although Bill Stoneman heads the baseball wing, Uhlich is responsible for the budget (yes, the Walt Disney Co. has something to do with it as well) and every other department.

The sea of red that will flood Edison Field tonight?

Uhlich is the person who pushed for the new color and logo, dumping the uniform that has been described as resembling a pin-striped periwinkle pajama and a logo, with those wings coming out of the “A,” that looked like a “Disney cartoon.”

It was Uhlich who spearheaded the renovation of the Tempe, Ariz., spring training facility and the renovation of the former Big A under Disney.

When Gene and Jackie Autry were finalizing the Angels’ sale, outgoing president Richard Brown said in reflection Friday, that he recommended the retention of many on his staff but told the new owner that “two people were indispensable.”

They were Uhlich and Tim Mead, who remains as vice president for communications.

When Tony Tavares resigned in January as president of Anaheim Sports, and Paul Pressler, who came in as the Disney liaison, considered conducting a national search for a sports executive to head the Angel operation, he ultimately decided that he didn’t have to look beyond Uhlich.

All of this is impressive, of course, but didn’t Bill Bavasi and Bob Fontaine Jr. put together the nucleus of the team that has won 106 games this year and will be meeting the San Francisco Giants tonight? Didn’t Stoneman enhance that nucleus, adding important pieces?

The evidence is obvious. However, many in an organization that has found continuity and stability difficult to maintain believe Uhlich has also contributed to the on-field success by deflating what he admitted was a “tense atmosphere” at times under the micro-management style of Tavares, who seldom hesitated expressing his public displeasure when he felt the team deserved it.

The departing president left a thick quotebook.

Two examples:

* “This team has too many players who look like they came from Newport Beach, where their daddies and mommies gave them everything they wanted.”

* “Somebody told me that you can’t trade all 25 players. I said, ‘Why not?’ ”

Those and other remarks, possibly justified at the time, tended to embitter the players.

Now?

Well, even Tavares might have trouble sniping at the performance of a team whose players resemble anything but spoiled children from Newport Beach, but the calm emanating from upstairs at Edison Field hasn’t gone unnoticed in the clubhouse.

“It filters down to the extent that we know it’s Bill and Mike [Scioscia] running the baseball show and we don’t have to worry about anybody else,” said closer Troy Percival, who signed a two-year, $16-million extension after Tavares left and who might otherwise have demanded a trade because of his fury with Tavares for allegedly leaking confidential information regarding salary talks.

Said Tim Salmon: “I never paid any attention to any of that stuff, but I do know that Kevin Uhlich has been here forever. He’s like one of us.”

Uhlich gave up his own baseball career at Cypress College in favor of climbing that Angel ladder, from batboy to assistant clubhouse manager to assistant director of stadium operations to director of stadium operations to vice president of sales to vice president of sales, marketing and operations to his current position of senior vice president, business.

“When you think of all the people who have worked here, all the turnover, Kevin not only survived but excelled,” said Mead. “The rank and file in the organization know he’s come from the ground up and respect his loyalty and ability.”

When Pressler gave Uhlich autonomy, Uhlich gave it to his department heads. When the Angels opened the season 6-14 and the talk shows were filled with venom toward Scioscia, Uhlich and Stoneman refused to inflame the situation.

“Everybody is different,” Uhlich said. “Tony is very passionate and tends to show his emotions. I don’t think it pays to get angry, to let people see you get angry.

“People say to me, ‘My god, didn’t you ever have a bad day in your life?’ Well, certainly, we all do, but I try not to dwell on it. I try to put it behind me and move on as quickly as I can.”

No one can be certain what will happen when the team is sold again, who will survive.

Amid the turmoil and turnover when the Autrys sold to Disney, former president Brown said, “Kevin emerged as a leader people looked to for support.” Now he is the official leader, and the joint is jumpin’ with people in red. World Series tickets are being scalped for $5,000 and more, about 20,000 stuffed rally monkeys have been sold in the postseason alone and the Angels already have about 1,500 deposits on season tickets for next year, when Uhlich thinks the total will increase from about 13,000 to 15,000 at least.

Uhlich, however, agrees with Scioscia’s theory that the only way for the Angels to maintain the rebirth is by becoming a perennial contender.

“We have to become more than a one-year wonder to really solidify the brand,” Uhlich said. “We’ve had great years in the past, too, but never back to back. Until we do, it’s a roller coaster.”

The ride, however, has taken Uhlich right to the top.

If playing catch with Ryan and Tanana was to be savored, watching the World Series from the executive suite is even better.