Angel Team

Angel reliever Mike Butcher reared back and kicked the Gatorade cooler Wednesday night, knocking it to the ground. He grabbed an empty box, and tossed it toward the on-deck circle. Then, as if he had not inflicted enough damage, Butcher grabbed the cooler with two hands, and flung it all the way to the first-base coach's box.

Three high school seniors have signed national letters of intent to play volleyball at UC Irvine next season. Carolyn Janisch, Sue Olszewski and Alison Wood will give the Anteaters much needed height on the front line. Janisch, a 5-foot 11-inch outside hitter, was a first-team All-CIF 4-A selection at Long Beach Wilson and a 1985 U.S. Volleyball Assn. Junior All-American.

An Angel team that seemed so deficient for so long, that exasperated fans with an arid attack that often failed to support its starting pitching, that spent all season searching for some kind of offensive identity, only to find it didn't really have one, became the first of the American League contenders to clinch a division title. They lack power, they struggled to fill the black hole that has become the No.

Three more Angel home runs on Sunday, and Chili Davis had none of them. Fourteen more Angel base hits, and Chili Davis had none of those, either. The only thing the Angels' designated hitter did all afternoon was walk to first base. Three times. In the first three innings. This is the new, and vastly flawed, American League pitching strategy for the Angels this summer: Pitch around the big Dawg and take your luck with the kids. So Chili is quasi-intentionally walked three times . . .

U nconventional wisdom for a Monday morning . . . Dick Schofield: The Angels' infield of the '90s is now completely eradicated--and what does the home team have to show for it? Shawn Abner (traded for Jack Howell), Ron Tingley (traded for Mark McLemore) and now, Julio Valera. Schofield will help New York; he can catch the ball, which makes him a minority among Mets. As for Who-lio?

Twenty years later, the chant still echoes in Rod Carew's mind: "Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we . . . " That was the Anaheim Stadium sound track that magical summer of 1979, when the hits kept on coming for an Angel team that stole the fans' hearts and gave the rest of the American League a shot to the solar plexus, bashing its way to the franchise's first division championship.

Here's an Angel not-so-fun fact you won't find in the box scores or through some online statistical service: third-base Coach Larry Bowa went 20 consecutive innings from Wednesday through Friday without being touched by an Angel. That amazing streak, in which the Angels did not advance a runner to third base for 20 consecutive innings, came to an end when Bowa shook the hand of Troy Glaus, whose home run in the eighth inning Friday night ended a 22-inning scoreless streak.

A solitary man, with perfectly white hair and a perfectly straight back, sat in the corner of Diablo Stadium on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday. He seemed to pay no attention to the hundreds of empty seats surrounding him. It didn't seem to bother him that he was watching only Angel pitchers and catchers playing catch and trying to stretch out the off-season kinks in muscles that had been happily at rest for five months. The man would watch, he would write. Watch, write. Watch, write.

The turn of events from Sunday to Monday, when the Angels went from a six-hit effort in a loss to Texas to a 20-hit effort in a win over the Rangers, left Angel Manager Terry Collins perplexed. "When someone can explain this game to me, I'd be happy to listen," Collins said. "That's why this game is so great, because every night it's something different." Collins wouldn't have minded the same old story Tuesday night, though.

The Angels, who start more utility guys than you'll find in a telephone company repair truck, won a slugfest against the walking All-Star team that is the New York Yankees on Tuesday night, ending a losing streak at four games with an improbable 9-7 victory before 25,313 in Yankee Stadium. Then the verbal sparring began.