Whatever, Whenever for Shields

Through baseball’s steroids era he bounces, a sliver of sunlight through dusty curtains, a Gumby among Goliaths.

Scot Shields doesn’t use a syringe, he looks like one.

“I never have to worry about a random drug test,” the Angels’ best pitcher says with a grin. “When I walk in for the urine sample, the guy takes one look at me and says, ‘Ah, get out of here.’ ”

He’s not on the juice, he’s on the sweets, Halloween-sized candy he chews in the bullpen, sometimes so much he takes the mound with a tummy ache.

“Sometimes I get out there and say, ‘What did I just do?’ ” Shields says.

He doesn’t lift weights because, well, it makes him, you know, sore.

“I work out too much, my body starts to hurt,” Shields says.

He’s 6 feet 1, allegedly 185 pounds, all toothpicks and legs, skinny not only in upper body, but first name.

That’s Scot, with one t because -- and we’re not making this up -- his mother didn’t want him to be named after a roll of toilet paper.

“Whatever,” he says, and whatever indeed.

In whatever the Angels need, Scot Shields delivers.

Strikeouts? He struck out four of five batters for his first save against Texas.

Grounders? On Tuesday against the Chicago White Sox, he faced seven batters, and not one hit the ball in the air.

Flexibility? So far this season, he has a two-inning win, a two-inning save, and a two-inning hold. He came in with two out and two on in the eighth inning Thursday at Angel Stadium and retired the last four Chicago hitters.

And, oh yeah, he’s given up one earned run in the last seven weeks.

“This guy, he comes in the game, you want to get him out of the game, he’s been unhittable,” says Ozzie Guillen, White Sox manager. “I was looking at the statistics sheet for left-handed and right-handed batters against him, and it doesn’t matter. When he pitches, they all stink.”

And now the Angels need him, both literally and figuratively, for his ability to save.

With Frankie Rodriguez on the disabled list and the offense limping, the finishing touches during the next couple of weeks will belong to Shields, who has the imperfectly perfect makeup for the job.

“I will battle you, I will fight you,” Shields says, grinning. “But afterward, hey, it’s not war.”

No, afterward, it’s often McDonald’s, Shields being one of the few highly paid athletes who still shows up there four or five times a week.

When the season began, Southland baseball was about the strength of Vladimir Guerrero and the power of Eric Gagne.

Who could have guessed the town would have been stolen by a guy who doesn’t have either? Who could have imagined that the guy with the best numbers would have the highest number?

Shields still wears the scrub-sized No. 62 that was given to him when he first showed up four years ago.

He had always worn No. 10, but third-base coach Ron Roenicke wears it, and Shields wouldn’t dream of asking him, and besides, he’s superstitious.

“I don’t want to change one thing,” he says, noting that he touches the resin bag before each inning, never touches the base line, never changes his dugout seat.

Instead of newfound ‘roid rage, Scot Shields has old-fashioned baseball fever, and look around, it’s catchy.

He laughs and talks on the field, and the opponents respond, witness his recent encounter with Gagne while Shields was backing up third base.

“I looked into the Dodger dugout and said, ‘Man, you’ve got great stuff,’ ” he recalls. “Gagne just smiled back.”

Finally, they are also saying that about a guy who, eight years ago, was a 38th-round draft pick. Shields was taken so low that he was informed of his selection by the mailman.

“I was sleeping, this guy was banging on my door, I told him to go away, he wouldn’t go away, so I came outside,” Shields recalls. “He drops a package from the Angels on the ground and I start shaking.”

It is a wonder that they found him at tiny Lincoln Memorial University in the Tennessee hills.

Then again, maybe they noticed the fact that he once threw 261 pitches in a game there.

“I went 16 innings, and was ready to go out there in the top of the 17th, but we lost,” he recalls.

Sore? “Nah.”

Ice? “Never.”

Are today’s starting pitchers babied? “No comment.”

It was this agility, and attitude, that impressed the Angels when they finally brought him to the big leagues for the second half of the championship season.

“Sometimes I do wish he would ice, but he has as rubber of an arm as I’ve seen in my days in pro ball,” said Bud Black, Angel pitching coach. “He fits in perfectly in our bullpen ... there’s a certain toughness to them, they’re all dead-enders, they never want to come out and they’ll all pitch every day.”

He wants to pitch every fifth day, and he has a 3.97 earned-run average in 15 career starts, but he knows where he’s needed right now.

“They know what I want to eventually do, but right now, I know my place here,” Shields says, another typical Angel team player, shrugging.

That place, Manager Mike Scioscia says, is a surprisingly exalted one.

“No doubt, he’s our most valuable pitcher,” he says.

That place, after the Angels won the 2002 World Series, was a refreshingly ordinary one.

“How did I celebrate?” Shields asks. “At a sports bar.”

That place, during one recent afternoon in the clubhouse, was a strangely sweet one.

“Somebody wants me to sign this ball on the sweet spot?” he asks, holding an autograph request in his hand. “My first one!”

But surely not the last, baseball soon to be embracing a star who doesn’t want to imitate Big Mac as badly as he wants to eat one.