He’s no Angel, much to fans’ sorrow

Admit it, the first word you think of when you hear David Eckstein’s name is “short.” That’s OK. He uses it himself in the first sentence of his autobiography, “Have Heart.”

My name is David Eckstein, and you could call me a short shortstop.

After last weekend, I’m ready to associate a new word with Eckstein: long.

Long-term fans in Orange County. A long day of signing autographs. And when it comes to Eckstein’s departure from the Angels, a long memory.

Eckstein signed copies of “Have Heart” at the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda on Saturday. He sat in a replica of the White House East Room, with a line snaking back and forth through the spacious room, out the door, down a hallway and into the main entrance lobby. He started signing at 11 a.m. and didn’t stop until 6:30 p.m., after 10 Sharpies had been drained of ink and the last of the 2,000 books on hand was personally autographed.

Local residents Bob and Marilyn Collier arrived at 8:40 a.m. and waited about 2 1/2 hours to get their autographs, just “because of the person that he is,” Marilyn Collier said.

There were St. Louis Cardinals fans in the building as well, but most of the red clothing was the Angels’ shade, such as the cap on David Zach’s head.

“I’ve always thought [Eckstein] was a first-class person, with a lot of integrity,” said Zach, who brought his 9-year-old son along.

His son couldn’t remember the details of the Angels’ World Series championship in 2002, but the older fans could, and still cling to the memories of Eckstein’s knack for making things happen.

“To me, it’s a totally humbling situation,” Eckstein said. “You go out there, I’m not the biggest guy, I’m not the fastest guy, I’m not a superstar. From day one here the fans were my biggest supporters.”

They still can’t believe the Angels let him walk away as a free agent two years later.

“I almost cried,” Marilyn Collier said. “I was so heartbroken. I told him that [Saturday]. I said, ‘We miss you in Anaheim. It’s just not the same.’ ”

It wasn’t that Eckstein, 31, wanted to leave.

“When you play for a club, you think that’s where you are going to be playing the rest of your life,” Eckstein said. “The way the whole situation came down, I was very disappointed. That’s where it really hits you that the game is a business.”

I asked if he drew any motivation from the Angels’ dismissal. He laughed.

“I can say, every day,” Eckstein said.

“When certain things happen, it definitely helps feed you to keep fighting through things. What went on definitely feeds me. I don’t want to say what actually went down. But what was said to me definitely feeds me. It hit me in my face that it was a business. I’ll leave it at that.”

Angels General Manager Bill Stoneman said: “I’m not going to get into it. I don’t discuss negotiations, whether they’re planned or past.

“Dave Eckstein was a real sparkplug for us and had some good years for us and was huge for us when we won the World Series and all that stuff. If what you’re asking me to do is to make public comment on negotiations, we don’t do that.”

After driving in 63 runs in 2002, Eckstein struggled to top that number in the next two seasons combined. His batting averaged dropped to .252 in 2003, then climbed back to .276 the next year, but didn’t approach the .293 average he posted in ’02.

What the numbers didn’t show was that while Eckstein was beset by nagging injuries in 2003 he also had to deal with his father suffering with a failing kidney that required dialysis and eventually a transplant.

Things worked out fine for Eckstein and his father. His dad received a new kidney in August 2005. Eckstein signed with the St. Louis Cardinals not too long after the Angels replaced him with Orlando Cabrera, and this year Eckstein was named the World Series most valuable player after he hit .364, drove in four runs and scored three to help the Cardinals beat the Detroit Tigers in five games. Maybe that didn’t change his disappointment at how things went down here, but the good thing is it didn’t change him. Not even the new Corvette that came with the MVP award was enough to change him.

He still drives his mother’s 1999 Toyota Avalon. He’ll give the Corvette to his brother.

“He loves cars,” Eckstein said. “I can’t drive a stick. The car only comes in sticks.”

No big movie deals are in the works, either. His wife, actress Ashley Drane, would claim that’s a good thing, based on his appearance with fellow Angels Adam Kennedy and Scott Spiezio on “She Spies” shortly after they won the World Series in 2002.

“She said that was by far the worst performance ever,” Eckstein said.

“She’s trying to work with me to be a little better. That was so brutal.”

Ashley also delights in the telling of a story from this summer in St. Louis, when they stopped by a grocery store to buy some boxes of Eckstein’s locally released EcksO’s cereal for some friends. The price was marked down and when they went through the checkout line, the clerk, not realizing he was talking to the man pictured on the box, said, “When will these athletes learn? Their cereals never sell.”

Eckstein just nodded in agreement.

Eckstein did get a kick out of his name being used for one of the killers on an episode of the TV show “Justice.”

“The funny thing,” said the man whose last name rhymes with Einstein, “they said, ‘Eck-steen.’ ”

Guess it’s going to be a little longer before he’s a household name.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com. To read more by Adande go to latimes.com/adandeblog.