Angels take the road less traveled

BALTIMORE -- First stop, Camden Yards, where the Angels begin a three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles tonight.

“That park in the summer was like pitching in a studio apartment,” said Chuck Finley, an Angel from 1986 to 1999. “The ball flies out of there like there’s no tomorrow. Of all the parks I ever pitched in, that’s the one I hated most.”

Next stop, Fenway Park, where the Angels begin a three-game series against the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox on Monday night.

“Sometimes,” Finley recalled of historic and -- for the Angels -- horrific Fenway, “you go into a yard and you’re so used to a team beating you, you’re almost down 2-0 before the game starts.”

Last stop, Yankee Stadium, where the Angels begin a four-game series Thursday night against the storied franchise that has won 26 World Series and always seems to have a prolific offense.

“It was always tough going to New York late in the season,” former Angels outfielder Tim Salmon said. “You hope you have a five-run lead in the ninth, because those teams always came back.”

One trip, 10 games, in three cities that have not been kind to the Angels. Since their inception in 1961, the Angels have gone 116-174 in Baltimore, 117-173 in Boston and 111-173 in New York.

Those cities have also combined to pack a powerful one-two-three punch to the Angels’ pride, playoff hopes, or both.

Twenty-five times in franchise history, the Angels have ventured to Baltimore, Boston and New York on the same trip. Only three times have they had a winning trip.

Their overall record on those trips: 82-139.

“I can tell you why,” said Salmon, an Angel from 1992 to 2006. “The years I was there, they had good teams in Baltimore, good teams in Boston and good teams in New York. You were bound to face at least two teams in playoff contention.”

Often in suffocating conditions.

“The heat, the humidity . . . New York and Baltimore were really hot places -- it was brutal,” Finley said. “By the time we’d get acclimated to it, we were gone.”

This used to be a regular trip for the Angels, but because of adjustments to accommodate interleague play and the addition of Tampa Bay in 1997, the Angels have not made a Baltimore-Boston-New York trip since 1996.

“That’s amazing; I can’t believe they haven’t done it since 1996,” Salmon said. “Those were always great trips for meal money, though. I got called up in the middle of a trip to Oakland, Baltimore, New York and Boston, and we got $60 a day. Coming from triple A, that was a ton of money.”

The Angels often left the East Coast feeling robbed. Or mugged. They went 1-8 on a trip to New York, Boston and Baltimore from Aug. 29 to Sept. 6, 1995, getting outscored, 66-26, in the nine games.

Though they were in Camden Yards the night Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-games streak, the Angels lost 3 1/2 games off their division lead on the trip, part of a late-season collapse from an 11-game, early-August lead.

“I was surprised we got the one,” Finley said of the lone win.

One of the darkest moments in franchise history also occurred on that East Coast swing.

On May 21, 1992, en route from New York to Baltimore, an Angels team bus crashed on the New Jersey Turnpike, injuring 12, including Manager Buck Rodgers seriously.

Shortly after the accident, a second team bus arrived, and players, including Finley, helped their fallen teammates to safety.

“I can shut my eyes and go through events like they happened yesterday,” Finley said. “I’m surprised no one got killed. There were two mature trees on each side of the accident, and the bus split them. If it hit one of those trees, there would have been some fatalities from people going through the windshield.”

The Angels went 2-7 on that trip. They returned in August that season and went 5-4 in the same cities. Their only other winning trips to Baltimore-New York-Boston were in August of 1996, when they went 6-4, and in May of 1962, when they went 5-3, thanks to a rare four-game sweep in Fenway.

These current Angels, Finley and Salmon say, are a little better equipped for the task, no matter how daunting.

Not only do they have baseball’s best record (62-39), best road record (31-18), and a 10-game division lead, they’ve gone 32-25 in Yankee Stadium since 1996, they won two of three in Fenway in April, and they won’t be scared off by a last-place Orioles team no matter how Pony League the dimensions (364 feet to left-center, 373 feet to right-center) in Camden Yards.

They have a deep and talented rotation, a strong late-inning relief corps led by closer Francisco Rodriguez, and a lineup that, while lacking in power, showed in Wednesday’s 14-run, 19-hit win over Cleveland that it has some potential.

They’ve also got a bit of a swagger, having won the 2002 World Series and three of the past four American League West titles.

“They’re going there with a lot more ammunition than we had,” Finley said. “They have a full force. We were running kind of lean back in those days. . . .

“The Angels are a dominant team now. Their reputation gets there before the wheels hit the tarmac. When we went there, those teams would think, ‘Hey, we can make up some ground.’ They should push all that aside.”

Salmon was on the 2002 championship team and sees a huge difference between present Angels and the teams of yore.

“We always came in as the underdog hoping to play well enough to beat those teams,” Salmon said. “Now, those teams are saying, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to play the Angels.’ That’s how tough they are. They’re so solid. It’s a testament to the kind of team they have.”

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mike.digiovanna@latimes.com