Out here in the lower left section of the continental U.S.,
October brings a balmy cool. After sunset, and if you’re sitting in
a stadium, the impulse is to put the jacket or sweatshirt on, then
take it off, then put it on again. There’s a meteorological
explanation, something about an early evening shift in marine
currents, but it does give new definition to “cold sweat.” If the
Angels and the Giants are blessed, no Santa Ana wind will come
ripping down from the Sierra Nevada as they slug it out for the
world baseball championship.
It’s true that Raymond Chandler described the Santa Anas — I’m
paraphrasing from memory — as those edgy moments when teachers
pulled schoolchildren off playgrounds and meek little housewives
felt the edges of their kitchen knives and studied their husbands’
necks. But Angel batters — Troy Glaus, Garret Anderson, Tim
Salmon, Adam Kennedy — can handle anything blowing in from the
Northeast.
The Angels? In the World Series? I know. A Greenwich Village
friend emails me that this is a fluke, granted by the merciful
Bronxees. He joins San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in
superciliousness. The mayor, who probably has his job for life,
having come to his comfy seat once term-limited out of the Assembly
Speakership, let it be known to a reporter that he’d rather be
beaten by Boston or Minnesota. But by … by … Anaheim?
Never!
Nor will he allow himself to wear mouse ears, for which the town
is better known, if he loses his wager to Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly. A
cowboy hat, in deference to the late Angel owner Gene Autry, will
do. It is true that Disneyland only seems to share a parking lot
with Edison International Stadium, once known as “the Big A” until
the electric company cravenly redubbed it “the Big Ed.” Pretty
clumsy, that. Don’t they get it? The “A” stood for both Anaheim and
Angels, and that illuminated circle resting atop the enormous
A-shape alongside the stadium denoted a halo. Willie’d never have
stood for such an assault on civic tradition, though nobody in
these parts remembers what they’ve named the Giants’
post-Candlestick Park venue.
Then there’s Giants manager Dusty Baker, whom we loved when he
was a Dodger, referring to Anaheim as “South Los Angeles.” Right.
And San Francisco is South Napa Valley.
Let’s get this out of the way: I’ll not reciprocate the sneer.
Any place that gave us both Ambrose Bierce and the Grateful Dead
deserves some affection. You can taste some fine Napa wines in some
splendid restaurants overlooking what someone — was it Herb Caen?
— called “Baghdad by the Bay.” I think that had something to do
with the place’s merry sinfulness and deadly bath houses, not
Ba’ath socialism. Socialist San Francisco certainly is, but
Willie’s no Saddam. You do wonder, though, why Joe DiMaggio left
his hometown to play ball in New York.
Some of us who came of age as Orange County sprang from bucolic
citrus groves to one of the world’s most cosmopolitan regions have
waited patiently for four decades, praying if Protestant, fingering
rosaries if Catholic, even thinking in sports koans if infiltrating
from across the Pacific. We waited as superannuated Bill Rigney
midwived the Angels from L.A.’s Wrigley Field, as Jim Fregosi
breathed soul into the team, as starlet Mamie van Doren led a bad
boy player around by the nose, as Gene Mauch tried to
professionalize the boys, as Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew and Don
Baylor, approaching pasture, tried to give them a world-class
patina.
The smartest move, probably, was bringing in former Dodger
catcher Mike Scioscia as the new manager. The stolid Scioscia’s
“one game at a time” approach surpasses the Zen method the media
have lionized in Lakers coach Phil Jackson — especially because
Scioscia doesn’t talk about it. Brand me not a syncretist, but it
works.
The Angels are ready. In 1986 I was among the congregation
inside the Big A when hurler Donnie Moore, a pitch away from taking
the Halos to the World Series, allowed Boston’s Dave Henderson a
game-winning home run. In his suite, Autry picked up his cowboy
hat, glanced over at his guest, the Crystal Cathedral’s Rev. Robert
Schuller, and smiled: “Well, we’re still in the major leagues!”
Now, that’s positive thinking, which we do maddeningly well in
Orange County, even as we try to forget that, a few years later,
Donnie Moore took his life.
The Cowboy died in 1998, never seeing a pennant, and in waltzed
Michael Eisner to Disney-fy the team. Imagineers brought in some
goofy mascots and changed the team colors, including something
called “periwinkle.” Regal those uniforms were, but they brought no
pennant. When local wags started referring to the team as “the
Periwinkles,” it was time for something more substantive.
They traded their star outfielder, Jim Edmonds, to St. Louis for
the unheard-of Adam Kennedy, a local boy from Cal State Northridge.
That was insanity incarnate until this season, and especially last
week, when Kennedy’s trifecta — three home runs, one of them in a
10-run inning — broke the spirit of the Minnesota Twins. And, oh
yes, they switched the uniforms from periwinkle-and-white to
red-and-white, which makes the Southern California throng look like
a bowl full of Cornhuskers.
It’s great for the Orange County spirit, too. The traffic-laden
paradise last made national news with the kidnap-murder of little
Samantha Runyon and the heroic police work of Sheriff Mike Carona.
And it’s been great for the local economy, with cash registers
ringing for caps, jerseys, car-window flags and stuffed “rally
monkeys,” which possess talismanic powers. The lines from the
Angels’ merchandise shop seem to stretch all the way to, well, the
Crystal Cathedral, whence the positive thinking loops back to home
plate.
It’ll be an exciting series, guaranteed. Up and down, back and
forth, as nervous as changing jackets or sweatshirts in response to
California’s October. But, as The Cowboy’s widow Jackie pledges,
we’ll do it in six. There’s no gainsaying one of the smartest women
in the West.
We’ll do it this time. We’ll do it for The Cowboy. We’ll do it
for Samantha. And we’ll even do it to smite The Sniper, Osama bin
Laden, and Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile, Willie Brown’s looking rather
Mickey Mouse lately.
