There was no way this part of Tuesday's conference call to introduce Angel pitcher Bartolo Colon as the American League Cy Young Award winner was going to get lost in translation.
"\o7Loco, loco, loco\f7," Colon said, when asked to describe the scene in Altamira, the tiny farming town on the Dominican Republic's mountainous north coast, where the right-hander grew up and spends most of his winters.
"You can't even imagine the scene," Angel broadcaster Jose Mota continued, translating Colon's full response. "People are stopping by, honking their horns. It's been really crazy, crazy, crazy. This is the first time we've celebrated something like this around here. There's going to be a lot of partying."
A season that ended in frustration, with Colon despondent about a shoulder injury that knocked him out of the AL championship series, took a somewhat serendipitous turn Tuesday when Colon became the Angels' first Cy Young Award winner since Dean Chance in 1964.
There was a strong September push for New York Yankee closer Mariano Rivera, and many felt the race would be tight. Even Colon, who went 21-8 with a 3.48 earned-run average to help the Angels win their second straight AL West title, had doubts.
"I thought maybe I wouldn't get it," Colon said. "A lot of crazy things went into my head."
But Colon won handily, finishing with 118 points in balloting by the Baseball Writers Assn. of America, garnering 17 first-place votes and 11 second-place votes to finish 50 points ahead of Rivera and earn a $500,000 bonus.
Rivera, whom Colon thanked "for teaching me how to hold the cut fastball" back in 1996, had 68 points, getting eight first-place votes, and Minnesota Twin left-hander and 2004 Cy Young winner Johan Santana finished third with 51 points.
"I'm very, very happy that the year Bartolo had is being recognized with this great honor," Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said. "If you see how hard he works, how much pain he pitched through, how well he performed ... it's tremendous for our organization. We would not be in the position we were without the year Bartolo had."
A lower-back injury hindered Colon during the final two months of the season, but it was a strain, or small tear, in the back of Colon's shoulder that knocked the 32-year-old out of the final AL division series game against the Yankees and the AL championship series against the Chicago White Sox.
