There’s Something Good Growing Under the Sun

Did you hear it?

Baseball in the Southland officially began Wednesday with a thwack, a whoosh and a whizzzz!

Batting was Vladimir Guerrero, knocking balls off the buttes, that rare spring batting practice requiring not sunglasses but earplugs.

Pitching was Ron Roenicke, risking severe neck injury by swiveling to watch.

“Boy, that ball comes off his bat hot, doesn’t it?” Roenicke asked, eyes wide. “I mean, hot.”

Did you smell it?

A scent of pine tar, a whiff of bubble gum, the mustiness of dirt-caked shoes.

Not from a player, but the owner.

Arte Moreno was seeing more action than a batting tee, working the clubhouse, hanging out in the dugouts, slapping every bright red jersey on the block.

“Me, I have to answer to the fans,” Moreno said. “I can’t worry about what someone else will say.”

Can you feel it?

The Angels held their first full-squad workout Wednesday with new stars, old heroes and a tightening grip on a Southern California baseball populace weary of straining its eyes toward increasingly distant Dodgertown.

This spring’s action is here, not there.

Here, the home of baseball’s best free-agent hitting acquisition, its best free-agent pitching acquisition, a strong new arm in the outfield, a reliable new arm in the rotation and a bunch of guys who can fill in the blanks with World Series rings.

Here, where the team was sent to camp by a fan fest that drew 17,000 to a stadium parking lot in the middle of February, leading to autograph lines that stretched for three hours.

Here, where the hope is.

“Looking around this clubhouse, seeing who is here, it’s very cool,” reliever Ben Weber said.

The New York Yankees acquired a better position player, and the Boston Red Sox added a better pitcher, but perhaps nobody reloaded for this season better than the Angels.

Not that they want anyone to notice. They’ve long since learned it’s better that way.

“That’s OK, we’ll fly under the radar,” pitcher Jarrod Washburn said with a grin. “That’s what we’re used to. That’s how we like it.”

Out of sight, but certainly not out of earshot, their cramped clubhouse teeming with high-volume English and Spanish and laughter.

“Baseball is its own culture,” Manager Mike Scioscia said.

Here, it is already clear, that culture is not about economizing or rationalizing, but winning.

“Obviously, your expectations are to win,” Moreno said. “Any team that doesn’t have the goal of making the playoffs shouldn’t be playing.”

Along one side of the room were Darin Erstad, David Eckstein and Adam Kennedy, their hamstrings and outlooks healed.

“I remember waking up one Sunday morning last month, and my brother is at the computer saying, ‘You signed him! You signed him!’ ” Eckstein recalled. “I’m like, ‘Who?’ He says Vladimir Guerrero. I’m like, ‘What?’ ”

Along the other side of the room were the pitchers, Washburn with his sound shoulder, Troy Percival with his strengthened hip, none of them looking for help, all of them thrilled to have it.

“Usually in the winter, I sit home and think about anything but baseball,” Washburn said. “This winter, I couldn’t get away from it. Every time I turned on the TV, we were picking somebody else.”

And with their final big acquisition ...

“I saw that we had picked up Guerrero on a sports ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen,” Washburn said. “I didn’t believe it, so I waited until the ticker came around again to see if it was really true.”

Between the guys still owning clothes that smell like champagne were the new kids, with first impressions.

Guerrero was all smiles. Bartolo Colon was all hips. Jose Guillen was all arm, Kelvim Escobar should be all innings.

Oh, yeah, and then there was new utility guy Shane Halter, picked up from the historically bad Detroit Tigers.

He was all eyes.

“This is every kid’s dream,” he said.

“This is what every guy hopes for, a chance to play at a place where every day, they feel they can win.”

This feeling, of course, might last only as long as the first DL or MRI. Injuries turned a World Series champion into a third-place team with 77 wins last year, so everyone around here knows how quickly that monkey can turn.

“Right now, it’s all hype,” Moreno said. “At the end of the day, we still have to play.”

Nonetheless, Wednesday’s feeling was fostered by old Angel habits that a $108-million payroll had seemingly not changed.

When Mickey Hatcher walked toward the batting cages just after 6:30 a.m., there were players waiting for him.

When the fields emptied around 1 p.m., Scioscia stayed behind to pitch bunting practice to Eckstein.

“Thank you for coming,” Moreno said, again and again, to reporters and players and fans. “Thanks for being here.”

On the brightest Southern California baseball day in 16 months, it was our pleasure.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.