Bronx, N.Y., September 30, 2002 — What better cliche to evoke when you’re talking baseball, a sport dominated by threes anyway. There are three outs, three strikes, three bases on which one travels around to home plate. Ninety feet between bases, 60 feet, six inches from the mound to the plate. Those uttering the phrase aim to give either themselves or someone close whom they mean to support a lift by stating, in effect, that failing at something twice is no big deal, that the third time is surely the time that efforts will be rewarded with success.
A skeptic would insist on some numerical justification for this platitude before lending any credence to it. They could try to prove statistically that one’s chances for success aren’t significantly better on one’s third try as they were the first or the second, or will be on the fourth. But the easier method of calling this into question is simply to find some famous examples of people who have failed to find success on their third try. Thus, although the NFL’s Buffalo Bills may win a championship someday, Jim Kelly and his gang were no more successful in Super Bowl No. 27 (or 28) than they had been in their first two tries. The WNBA’s New York Liberty have also come close to tasting victory, but they too have played in the fledgling league’s championship series four times and have yet to win. In politics, Harold Stassen mounted nine presidential campaigns from 1948 through 1992 and never came close. Songwriter Randy Newman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song in a movie 15 times before succeeding this year, and in probably the most glaring and well-known example of all, daytime drama actress Susan Lucci was nominated for an Emmy as outstanding lead actress 19 times before she finally won.
I was musing about this as I watched Angels rookie Mickey Callaway toe the mound on September 18 vs. the A’s on ESPN. The Angels were, incredibly, all over the A’s, and seemed about to steal the AL West from the team that failed to bury them, even during the A’s 20-game winning streak. The Halos had fashioned a 1-0, 10-inning victory over Mark Mulder the night before. And now they were pretty routinely abusing the A’s other super lefty and Cy Young candidate, Barry Zito. Leading 4-1, things seemed pretty much as they have most of this dream season. It appeared the time was ripe to confront and overcome some pretty dark demons.
Baseball fans all over Southern California were greeting this turn of events with the sound of “California Dreaming” drifting through their reveries, as the next day would be celebrated by some as what would have been the 59th birthday of Mama Cass Elliot. And that same Thursday 74 years before (and 15 years before Cass) had witnessed the big-screen debut of superstar cartoon character and worldwide icon Mickey Mouse at the Colony Theater in New York City, so you know the Disney band (and brand) would be leading the way in the celebrations.
Of course, all the postseason participants have intriguing stories. In the NL, the Wild Card Giants have a bone to pick, so to speak, with the playoff gods. They lost a World Series to the crosstown A’s when their city was crippled with an earthquake. And two years (one playoff year) before the introduction of the Wild Card slot that has opened the door to them this time, they did not go to the postseason despite having won 103 of their 162 regular-season games (a figure only New York and Oakland in the AL reached this year). But they did win an NLCS in 1988 to get to the series, and the New York representative had a storied postseason history, with several World Championships, the most recent in 1954.
If there is an overwhelming sentimental favorite, look no further than St. Louis, as this Cardinals team and its fans have been deeply and personally affected by the losses of longtime broadcaster Jack Buck and starting pitcher Darryl Kile. But they also traditionally have been a proven postseason performer, and still stand second to the Yankees in World Championships.
The “hard-charging” Expos denied the Braves the feat of beating all comers in their division by the incredible 20 games by which they led much of the season’s second half, but although they have experienced a string of broken promises and frustrated dreams getting to or in the World Series during their 11-year mastery of the NL East, they have won a Championship, and won five pennants since ’91, and prevailed this year largely on the accomplishments of a no-name bullpen topped by one of their former Big Three starters, John Smoltz.
Even the World Champion Diamondbacks, who continue to ride their two pitching aces to the post, spent the early season without stalwart third baseman Matt Williams and will confront the post without sparkplug infielder Craig Counsell and star outfielder Luis Gonzalez. They don’t have a lot of playoff history, but when you’re wearing the ring you don’t need to.
Take your pick of Yankees story lines. My favorite is that they are breaking in a new team without O’Neill, Martinez, Brosius, Justice and Sojo, and they are trying to reclaim a crown they consider theirs. But I also think you have to mention the hoped-for return, health and effectiveness of Mariano Rivera, the greatest postseason closer in major league baseball history, who did fail in last year’s Game Seven, and who has been disabled three times this year.
Minnesota has turned last year’s dream into this year’s reality, as they ran away with AL Central. They survived the contraction scare, and they have won two seven-game World Series in 15 years as the home team by winning all eight games in their particular ballpark, and no games on the road. Although the AL will be the home team again, most regard the Twins as the team that will keep the A’s in game shape as they prepare to take on the Yankees. We shall see.
And speaking of the A’s, Oakland has made the playoffs two years running, extending the Yanks to five games both times. They lost Johnny Damon, Jason Isringhausen and Jason Giambi to free agency, the last of the three to the Yankees, but rattled off the aforementioned 20-win streak, and won their division going away. The Athletics, too, have nine World Series Championships in their history, and four of them in the last 30 years playing in the city of Oakland.
Which leaves us with the L.A./California/Anaheim Angels. The third time was anything but a charm for them in 1986, and they are the only team invited to this year’s after party that has never won a postseason series, failing three times. And although they have given the Yankees fits over the years, they haven’t even seen postseason play in 16 years.
Their first of three visits to the playoffs was in 1979 as the California Angels (the “L.A.” named team never did make it), back when a lot of American League East fans (myself included) were rueing the new two-division breakdown lumping “all the bad teams” in the West. Their 88-74 record won the West but would have had them in fifth place (two games behind the Yanks, btw) if they had played in the East. (Strange year, 1979. Fully 10 of 14 AL teams played over .500 ball, as the Blue Jays and A’s hogged 217 of that year’s losses all to themselves.)
In Game One of 1979’s ALCS (a five-game series, as the Wild Card is now), they extended the 102-game-winning Orioles into extra innings before falling to John Lowenstein’s three-run homer. And in Game Two, the Angels fell behind 9-1 after three innings to home-standing Baltimore, and then mounted a furious comeback, scoring single runs in the sixth and seventh, three in the eighth, two in the ninth, only to fall just short, 9-8. Game Three was theirs 4-2 via a late two-run rally at home, but they were shut out and sent on their way by Scott MacGregor in Game Four. Not a bad showing though, nothing like the one game win in three series managed by the Texas Rangers in the nineties, for instance.
They faced another five-game ALCS contest in 1982, this time with Milwaukee. Their season record was five games better than it had been in 1979, and their first place West Division finish (three games ahead of Kansas City) would have placed them third in the East, one game behind Baltimore. Led by Reggie Jackson who piled up 39 homers after being snubbed in New York, they began this series at home in a format that called for two games in their park, and the remainder in Milwaukee.
They won Game One won behind ex-Dodger and ex-Yankee Tommy John, 8-3. Former Pirate Bruce Kison got the win in Game Two, 4-2, pushing the Brewers to the brink of elimination in the Big A, as the Angels’ home field was affectionately known. But the series turned with its move to Milwaukee, and Don Sutton bested Geoff Zahn in Game Three, and Moose Haas evened the series by winning Game Four over lefty John, 9-5. Holding a 3-1 lead behind Kison again in Game 5, they lost to a two-run seventh-inning rally, 4-3. They had been competitive, and had come within three innings of a series win. That the media saw fit to bestow that series’s MVP award on Angels outfielder Fred Lynn only further points out how close a battle it was. (But was the elevation of a former Boston Red Sox Rookie of the Year and MVP an omen of what was to come?)
They actually won one less regular-season game in 1986, but the predicted parity was coming, as this time they had the second best record in the AL, and would have finished two games ahead of my second-place Yankees had the two teams shared a division. But they stumbled to their title, winning only two of their last 10 games.
The seven-game ALCS they would play in 1986 would turn out to be two games too long for the Angels. They took a 1-0 lead as Mike Witt beat Roger Clemens in Game One, 8-1, in Boston. The game featured two wierd twists: I was rooting for the Red Sox (as an AL East fan), and Roger was tossed early for allegedly cursing out the home plate ump from the mound. Although Bruce Hurst evened the series in games on a 9-2 victory, the Angels were delighted to be returning to California with the series tied. Super lefty John Candelaria put the Angels up two to one in games by beating Dennis Oil Can Boyd, 5-3, and the champagne was purchased and ready after they outlasted the Red Sox in Game Four by rallying for three runs in the bottom of the ninth off Clemens and Calvin Schiraldi, winning 4-3 in 11 innings.
Game Five featured an oft-repeated tragic tale. Going to the ninth inning with a 5-2 lead at home, they succumbed to a Boston comeback capped by Dave Henderson’s home run off closer Donnie Moore. Moore (who would sadly take his own life less than three years later) had been a California staple in the pen, recording 52 saves over 1985 and 1986, and he had notched one behind Candelaria in Game Three. But even when Boston went ahead 6-5, the Angels didn’t quit, showing their last sign of life in the bottom of the ninth as they tied it 6-6. But they fell 7-6 in 11, and the franchise that we have just followed through a steady and seemingly inexorable climb through three postseasons in eight years, tumbled into a position from which they have not recovered until perhaps this year. Returning to Boston, they were never a factor while losing Games Six and Seven.
And lest the irony of this defeat escape anyone, please be reminded that this team to whom they fell, this group of 25 who would in almost no time find a way to lose to the New York Mets in a manner perhaps even more humiliating and painful than the one that led them to being in the World Series in the first place, is the team that baseball lore holds to be the most “cursed” of all teams. How reviled, baneful and stimatized must the team from sunny California have felt, first to lose in such a manner, and then to witness the team that defeated them being exposed as such a hapless and dysfunctional band of players themselves!
Mickey Callaway could not keep that charge going back on September 18. He surrendered back-to-back homers to Eric Chavez and Jermaine Dye, and was pulled in favor of lefty journeyman Dennis Cook after allowing two more baserunners. Cook would surrender a tying single to Terrance Long, record an out and then allow a three-run homer to DH Ray Durham. The Angels lost their hard-fought momentum that day, and ended up losing three of four to the A’s in Oakland. And as they faded from the AL West race, they gave Boston and Seattle some cause for hope with a losing streak before finally nailing down the Wild Card spot Thursday.
Their team is now the Anaheim Angels, they are owned by the Disney Corporation, and they play in a rebuilt facility that now goes by the name of Edison Field. And so as we await the five-game ALDS between the New York Yankees and the Anaheim Angels, the question must be asked. Have these Angels recovered from their fallen state, last week’s troubles notwithstanding, or are we to witness their demons come home to roost yet again?
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!