‘Mr. Angel’ Has Earned His Wings

It is the first day of the last week of his distinguished career. The weekend will come soon, and with it the pomp and circumstance of retirement, the ceremonies and farewells and standing ovations.

But this is Monday morning, so Tim Salmon is alone, at 38, hanging out in a “Jack’s Surfboards” T-shirt at the family summer home in Newport Beach. The sand is a few steps away, the Pacific Ocean a few more.

The boys of summer are just about gone, and not just the ones with bats and balls. The beach is empty. The lifeguard tower is boarded shut.

His wife has packed up and driven their four children back to their Arizona home, back for the school year. The kids left behind their affection, in pretty colors, on a banner hanging on a wall: “Daddy, We Love and Miss You.”

The wife and kids will see him again this weekend, and forever. The thousands of fans that make up his extended family will see him this weekend, and who knows when after that? For the Angels loyalists that embraced him as he steered a wayward franchise toward glory, this is a weekend for joy, sadness and appreciation.

They thank him at the stadium and in the streets of Southern California. They are the fans who cheered for the Angels before the Angels were cool, before Arte Moreno plastered billboards all over L.A., before Vlad and K-Rod, before the Rally Monkey and the World Series. They are the fans who bought tickets for decades on blind faith and unrequited loyalty.

They are the fans who shake Salmon’s hand, hug him, even cry upon meeting him.

“They’re the lifelong fans,” he says. “I relate to them.”

Sellout crowds and pennant races should not be taken for granted. The young players these days don’t know any better, so Salmon tells them.

“They don’t know how good they’ve got it,” he says.

The Angels might be a model franchise now, but they were a joke back then, to the extent anyone cared enough to joke. As the population of Orange County grew, their attendance plummeted.

And then came 2002, and with it the first playoff berth in 16 years and the first World Series, period. The Angels sold 3 million tickets for the first time in 2003, and in every year since then. They won consecutive division championships for the first time in 2004 and ‘05, and with this season they have posted three consecutive winning records for the first time.

“People want to be a part of this organization now,” Salmon said. “When I came up, it was like everyone had given up trying to buy the pennant. The organization was floundering a lot. We were.... “

And here he bursts out laughing.

“We were a small-market team,” he said.

Gene Autry spent freely on free agents but did not live to see his beloved team in the World Series. Jackie Autry, his wife, defined Orange County as a relatively small market, did not challenge the Dodgers in Southern California, reined in the spending and told Angels executives to play the kids.

In 1992, in his first game in the major leagues, Salmon batted cleanup, in Yankee Stadium, because the Angels had no one better.

In 1993, he was the rookie of the year, still the only Angels player to win that award. The Angels coughed up an 11-game lead in 1995, but a young core emerged, including Salmon, Troy Percival and Garret Anderson. Darin Erstad arrived the next year.

When the Angels finally got to the playoffs, seven years later, Salmon had played more games than any active major leaguer without getting there. When they won the World Series, in Game 7, Anderson delivered the game-winning hit, Percival earned the save and Erstad caught the final out.

And then Salmon stood for the fans, and for history. He waved one of Gene Autry’s cowboy hats at the sky. He hoisted the championship trophy over his head and circled the warning track, beaming, sharing the spoils of victory with the long-suffering fans.

In the spring, after the Angels unveiled their championship flag, Salmon raised it. Who else would? He is Mr. Angel, and not just because no one has hit more homers for the club.

Salmon played for Autry, for Disney, and for Moreno. He represented California, Anaheim and Los Angeles without leaving his team. He is the only player to wear the yellow halo, the silver halo and the hideous Disney mix of periwinkle and pinstripes.

The Angels and their fans celebrate him. In his heyday, he skipped free agency twice rather than abandon his flailing franchise to play for a winner. When he signed his first big contract, he skipped the announcement and went home to mow his lawn.

He bought out a section of right field for years, dubbed it “The Fish Bowl,” and donated 300,000 tickets to charities and youth groups. He and his wife Marci befriended troubled children in two Orange County group homes, sharing their Christian faith, impressing a sense of responsibility and community on those kids, and on their own kids.

“I felt like, from the standpoint of an athlete, it was important for me to be a role model,” Salmon said. “The big leaguers I modeled myself after -- the Cal Ripkens, the Robin Younts, the Dave Winfields -- were guys that played the game with integrity and class and treated people the way they wanted to be treated.”

Scioscia said he would use Salmon “as much as we can” over the season’s final five games. Salmon was the designated hitter Wednesday and will play right field at some point before retiring after Sunday’s finale.

He came, he saw, he hit. And, as his teammates softened him up, he smiled.

“We’ve broken him down, from what we refer to as Timmy Land,” Erstad said. “He’s very focused. He’s very prepared. He’s coming in here every day to win a baseball game, and he’s not going to let anything get in the way of that.

“Over the years, we’ve loosened him up a little bit, and we’ve seen his personality come out. Not that he wasn’t a great teammate before, but he’s just been awesome to be around.

“We were on a mission to get him out of Timmy Land, to at least get him to say hi to us when he came into the clubhouse. We accomplished that.”

When that intensity boils over into words, when he verbalizes his frustration over a bad at-bat, he does not use what we might now call everyday foul language.

“It’s his famous line: ‘Suck!’ ” Erstad said. “That’s what he says when most people say the S word.

“He won’t swear.”

That might be another reason he can appear to relate more to fans than to teammates. He is a fan himself, certainly, his voice pitched with excitement as he recounts the 48-hour whirlwind after Game 7 -- Jim Rome, Jay Leno, the championship parade, the rally in front of the stadium, then two more parades.

Salmon packed his car and drove to Arizona that night, switching from one radio station to another. He heard Angels on the left of the dial, Angels on the right of the dial and Angels in between.

“It was really surreal,” he said. “It was pretty awesome, to hear the way the whole city was excited about it.”

He never did play in an All-Star game, but he insists the sting is long gone, extinguished by the glory of October. He hit two home runs in the first World Series victory in Angels history. He led the liberation of two generations of Angels fans from the shadow of the Dodgers.

“I had a great career,” he said. “I did more than I ever dreamed as a kid. I grew up watching the Dodgers -- Steve Garvey, Ron Cey. To think I played in the big leagues and did the same thing my heroes did, to win a World Series for this city -- to see myself in the same light is kind of weird.”

He’ll pack up his car again next week, for another drive to Arizona. He displays his memorabilia there, hundreds of autographed bats and balls, one signed by Ripken on the day he broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played. Salmon played right field that day. The Angels lost, as they did nearly every day in September 1995.

The grandest prize in his collection commemorates the day the Angels won. He commissioned a World Series trophy of his own, three-quarters the size of the original.

“We had one spot for a World Series trophy,” he said. “For 10 years, we didn’t know if it would get filled. We thought we might have to put a nice photo there.”

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

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Salmon’s record

Tim Salmon’s career statistics, all with Angels, through Wednesday:

*--* Year G AB R H HR RBI AVG 1992 23 79 8 14 2 6 177 1993 142 515 93 146 31 95 283 1994 100 373 67 107 23 70 287 1995 143 537 111 177 34 105 330 1996 156 581 90 166 30 98 286 1997 157 582 95 172 33 129 296 1998 136 463 84 139 26 88 300 1999 98 353 60 94 17 69 266 2000 158 568 108 165 34 97 290 2001 137 475 63 108 17 49 227 2002 138 483 84 138 22 88 286 2003 148 528 78 145 19 72 275 2004 60 186 15 47 2 23 253 2006 72 198 29 53 9 26 268 Totals 1668 5921 985 1671 299 1015 282

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ON THE ANGELS’ ALL-TIME LIST

*--* Games 1,668 2nd Total Bases 2,955 2nd At-Bats 5,921 2nd Walks 967 1st Runs 985 1st Strikeouts 1,356 1st Hits 1,671 2nd On-Base Pct. 385 3rd Doubles 339 2nd Slugging Avg. 499 2nd Triples 24 10th Batting Avg. 282 11th Home Runs 299 1st Sacrifice Flies 68 1st RBIs 1,015 2nd Hit By Pitch 67 3rd

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Source: mlb.com