Experience Not Needed

If playoff experience counts for something besides a cliche, the Angels are dead.

The Angels are justifiably proud of their largely home-grown roster, but this is the flip side: No one in the Angel lineup for Tuesday’s playoff opener has played in a postseason game.

Based on projected lineups for the first game of the best-of-five division series against the New York Yankees, the Yankees lead the Angels, 296-0, in games of playoff experience.

“We’ve got a lot of experience on this side, which means we’re going to be relaxed,” Yankee pitcher David Wells said.

“Those guys are going to be a little tense. It’s an advantage for nerves--not for the game, but for your nerves. We’ve got that advantage.”

This is not mission impossible for the Angels, but it is mission improbable. In their first playoff appearance in 16 years, the Angels aren’t only playing against the Yankees. They’re playing against Yankee Stadium too, where unimaginably loud New York fans and an unimaginably loud sound system combine for nine innings of sonic assault.

If this series extends to five games, the Yankees play at home three times.

“There’s no place like Yankee Stadium in the postseason,” Yankee reliever Mike Stanton.

“The fans are rowdy, and they stay rowdy. That’s why home-field advantage is such a big thing for us. If you let it, it can definitely be an intimidating place. You’ve got to walk through all the monuments to get to the bullpen.”

No worries, the Angels vow. Since 1996, the year the Yankees won the first of four World Series championships in six seasons, the Angels are 18-17 at Yankee Stadium.

The Angels insist they’re not just happy to be here, but the Yankees were far less thrilled with their division championship than the Angels were with their wild-card berth.

The Angels celebrated madly, letting out years of frustration. The Yankees quietly checked off the first box on their to-do list.

“I’m not going to sit here and tell you last year was a success,” Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said. “We lost.”

They did, but not until the last inning of the last game of the World Series.

“I don’t play for second,” he said.

Mike Bordick, the Baltimore Oriole shortstop, has appeared in 32 playoff games. There is something to all that Yankee experience, he said.

“In the postseason, it seems, their pitchers gain a couple miles on their fastball,” Bordick said. “They’ve got so many big-time, clutch players.

“They’re definitely the team to beat.”

The lone Angel in Tuesday’s lineup with big-game experience is center fielder Darin Erstad, the punter for Nebraska’s national championship football team in 1994.

On the playoff roster, the lone Angel with postseason experience is pitcher Kevin Appier, who starts Wednesday.

Appier, who pitched for Oakland in the 2000 postseason, said he has shared his playoff experience with his teammates. What he remembers most, he said, is “how normal it feels.”

Said Appier: “It’s a baseball game. I remember thinking that. I remember standing in the outfield in the first batting practice of the postseason and thinking, wow, this seems strangely normal.

“More is riding on the game, but it’s still the same thing we’re doing.”

That’s the mantra, and the Angels will need to repeat it, over and over, while dealing with long-lost friends clamoring for tickets, television cameras shoved in their faces and hundreds of reporters pestering them.

“The first time, it’s pretty much a circus,” Bordick said.

Even Mo Vaughn, whose leadership skills were more hype than reality during his three injury-plagued years in Anaheim, is willing to help his old teammates.

“I would tell those guys that the most important thing is to get out on the field as soon as possible,” Vaughn told the Newark Star-Ledger. “All the other stuff that goes on before and after the game, with the media and the interviews and all the other stuff, can get to you.

“I remember back in ’95 my mind was swirling. I didn’t handle it very well. The next time around, I figured out how to handle that stuff better.”

In 1995, his MVP season, he went 0 for 14 with seven strikeouts in his playoff debut. In 1998, he went seven for 17, driving in seven runs in four games.

And, although the Oakland Athletics lost to the Yankees in the division series last year, they did win the first two games at Yankee Stadium.

Jason Giambi, the first baseman for Oakland last year and for the Yankees this year, was asked what the key might be for the Angels to win a playoff game at Yankee Stadium.

“Why am I going to tell you that?” he said. “I don’t want them to beat us.”