It’s a Dream Finish for Angels, Riggs

In one corner of the Angel clubhouse, Jose Guillen was keeping a secret.

“If there weren’t so much media around, I would pull up my pants and show you my knee,” he said. “It’s not pretty.”

In another corner, Ben Weber was rubbing his shin.

“You ever seen gangrene? It looked like that,” Weber said. “I didn’t tell anybody for four days. Then I couldn’t walk, and I didn’t have a choice.”

During the legendary comeback in the sixth game of the 2002 World Series, Darin Erstad hit a home run that epitomized the Angel culture because of how he did it -- with a broken bone in his wrist.

“There’s an aura of that in here,” said Troy Percival.

Which is why it was so odd Tuesday to see another corner of the Angel clubhouse empty.

It was the one belonging to Troy Glaus, who has decided he can no longer do the one thing that has marked this team like a bright red “A.”

He could no longer play in pain.

Glaus has decided to essentially forgo the season and undergo right shoulder surgery requiring at least four months of recovery, a move that has flattened hopes and raised eyebrows.

Is the shoulder suddenly that bad? And does it have to be fixed now?

Glaus is electing surgery on a shoulder that, in his last 10 games, accounted for four home runs and eight RBIs. At that pace, over an entire season, he would hit 65 home runs and 130 RBIs, not bad for a bum wing.

“It’s a pain issue ... it was getting worse,” Glaus said. “I wasn’t going to make it.”

He elected surgery at a time when Tim Salmon’s bad knee was not improving and Garret Anderson’s bad upper back remained a mystery.

“I want to be back in September,” Glaus said, optimistically. “That’s why I did it now.”

Finally, he is electing surgery despite refusing recommended surgery on the shoulder in August and committing himself to rehabilitation. By ending that commitment early, he may be contributing to the eventual end of what could be a championship season.

Think the Angels can win this without him?

Listen to the loudspeaker during the middle of Glaus’ fourth-inning interview Tuesday.

“E-5,” it boomed.

Yes, while Glaus was explaining his absence, Chone Figgins was throwing a ball wildly to first base in his place.

Talk about timing.

In the Angels’ 1-0 victory over the New York Yankees, Figgins was making his sixth career start at third base.

Shane Halter has made five errors in his last four starts at third base.

Without Glaus, the hot corner is in flames.

Without Glaus, there is nobody to hit behind Vladimir Guerrero and in front of Jose Guillen, a spot that worked wonders in the season’s first six weeks.

Imagining the Angels without Glaus is like imagining the Yankees without Derek Jeter, the Florida Marlins without Josh Beckett, other world champions without their World Series MVPs.

“Can we survive?” asked Jarrod Washburn grimly. “It’s our job to survive.”

In a lineup without Salmon or Anderson or Darin Erstad or Brendan Donnelly, Glaus was the one guy who wasn’t going anywhere.

He led the league in home runs with 11, right? Those guys never take themselves out of the lineup, do they?

He was off to the best start of his career, during the last year of a contract, and those guys always find a way to make it work, no?

“Lots of guys rehab a shoulder injury end up just fine,” Washburn said. “But you never know how serious it is. Troy chose the other option.”

And to think, he aggravated the injury a couple of weeks ago in Minnesota when he dived for a grounder and came up holding ... his left shoulder.

“I think the rehab route worked for Troy,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. But “when he dove on it, his shoulder was beat up already, and that thrashed it some more.”

Glaus kept hitting homers in the days after the dive, but said Tuesday that it didn’t matter.

“It hurt on every swing,” he said.

The Angels understand the pain. Just watching Guerrero walking into the dugout, they understand pain.

But they hoped that, having refused surgery last year, Glaus would continue to play this season until it became so bad he was hurting the team, or at least hitting something less than .375, which he batted in his final 10 days.

They hoped that perhaps he could continue rehabilitating the shoulder while moving to designated hitter or first base.

They hoped that he would look around a clubhouse and listen.

The bullpen has a motto that, paraphrased for a family newspaper, is, “Don’t be a baby.”

The starting rotation includes a guy, Washburn, who pitched last year in constant collarbone pain.

The batting order is filled with guys like David Eckstein, who last year routinely grimaced and limped from the clubhouse to the infield.

This is why they have won. This is why, even with Glaus perhaps never again wearing an Angel uniform, they will continue to compete.

Maybe the Angels hoped that Troy Glaus was watching the other third baseman in town Tuesday, the Dodgers’ Adrian Beltre, on television from Philadelphia, hitting the ball out of the park, then going into a home-run limp.

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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.