Los Angeles Angels Of Anaheim Baseball Team

Steve Physioc and Rex Hudler won't be broadcasting Angels games anymore. Physioc and Hudler have been told jointly by FS West and the Angels that they will not be part of the Angels' on-air team next season. A statement by Fox and the Angels said that Rory Markas and Mark Gubicza will be the television voices for the team on FS West and KCOP next season, and Terry Smith and Jose Mota will do the radio on KLAA AM 830. Physioc, 54, who has called baseball for 25 years for the San Diego Padres, San Francisco Giants, Cincinnati Reds and ESPN, said the news was "a total shock.

If the Angels were in the English Premier League, they'd be in danger of being relegated to the second division right now. They didn't look like they belonged on the same field as the Texas Rangers on Friday night. Josh Hamilton continued his torrid slugging with his major league-leading 16th and 17th homers, a towering shot to right in the second inning and a laser to right in the fourth, and Yu Darvish weathered a 1-hour, 56-minute rain delay to throw 51/3 solid innings to lead the Rangers to a 10-3 victory at the Ballpark in Arlington.

Catching his breath every few moments, Jim Adenhart explained to the hushed crowd that the greatest day of his life was when his nine-pound, three-ounce baby boy was born. Then, in detail, he relayed his final conversation with his son last week, after Nick Adenhart had pitched the best game of his brief major league career.

It's almost serendipitous the way it worked out, with the rotations of the teams expected to battle for American League West supremacy aligning so that Angels left-hander C.J. Wilson will face Texas right-hander Yu Darvish on Friday night in the first game between the clubs this season. Wilson, 31, helped the Rangers reach the World Series in 2010 and 2011 and was somewhat disappointed with the team's halfhearted attempts to retain him before he signed a five-year, $77.5-million deal with the rival Angels on Dec. 8. Why the Rangers never made a formal free-agent offer to their ace became clear a few weeks later when they spent $107 million to acquire the rights to negotiate with and then sign Darvish, the hard-throwing, 6-foot-5 Japanese sensation who replaced Wilson in the Texas rotation.

Darin Erstad played through the emotional trauma of a painful divorce in 2001, fought major hamstring injuries the last two years and has endured constant criticism for not generating enough power for a corner infielder making $8 million a season.

What should have been a joyous occasion for Steve Finley -- the birth of his fifth child in late January -- became a highly stressful period for the new Angel center fielder, who reported to camp Sunday in advance of Tuesday's first full-squad workout. On Jan. 23, shortly after beginning her ninth month of pregnancy, Finley's wife was hit in the face by a line drive while attending her son's Little League game in Del Mar, Calif.

Calling Anaheim "a small part of a very big place," the former business strategist of the Walt Disney Co. testified Friday he envisioned the possibility of adding Los Angeles to the Angels' name a decade ago. In testimony that directly contradicted two key witnesses for the city of Anaheim in its lawsuit against the Angels, Larry Murphy said Disney never intended that Anaheim would have to remain the only place in the team name. "I personally was concerned ...

It was midsummer 1998, and I was updating my book on the history of the Angels I had just spent several hours interviewing Gene Mauch on the patio of his fairway home in Rancho Mirage. We were in the driveway, as I was preparing to leave, and this man who had confronted so many demons in his long and frustrating managerial career asked the last question. "Tell me," he said, "am I supposed to feel tormented? Am I supposed to feel that all those years added up to only torment?"

The Angels have raised the price of some season tickets, cut the price of others and frozen prices on parking, concessions and single-game tickets. The Angels also added "preferred" seating categories on the field and terrace levels, with Angel Stadium now divided into 32 categories. For a year in which the All-Star game will be played at Angel Stadium, with season-seat holders guaranteed the opportunity to buy an All-Star game ticket, the Angels raised season prices by an average of 4.1%, spokesman Tim Mead said.

Big Glove. It's not a spinoff of a popular HBO series, it's the new mitt Angels catcher Mike Napoli will try this spring. Napoli has better-than-average power for a catcher, but he went into a defensive slump last season, struggling so much with his throwing and receiving skills that Manager Mike Scioscia in August held a lengthy closed-door meeting with the catcher. "He was trying to get me to step up my game," Napoli said. "He was trying to make me a better catcher."

At the plate: Leadoff batter Erick Aybar (single, two walks) and No. 2 hitter Howie Kendrick (single, two-run homer, walk) reached base in their first three plate appearances, setting the table superbly for Albert Pujols. Vernon Wells, who believes the key to rebounding from a horrendous 2011 season (.218, 66 RBIs) is driving the ball up the middle, hit a two-run single to center in the first and lined out hard to left field in the third. On the mound: C.J. Wilson has made several mechanical adjustments to his delivery this winter but declined to discuss them in detail.

Howie Kendrick said he was aware of what effect an big season could make on his value as a free agent before 2013, but remaining an Angel trumped taking on the speculative venture. "It's special to be around this organization where I grew up, to stay home," Kendrick said Tuesday in a news conference at an Anaheim restaurant to announce the four-year, $33.5-million contract extension he signed with the team. "I can't explain how happy I am to stay in Anaheim. " Kendrick said the Angels' off-season acquisitions of free-agent slugger Albert Pujols, starting pitcher C.J. Wilson, reliever LaTroy Hawkins and catcher Chris Iannetta solidified his desire to stay.

The meeting was supposed to be an hour, two at the most. The prospective owner wanted to talk baseball with the general manager, to hear about how the team planned to sustain its success. Arte Moreno and Bill Stoneman met for five hours that day. Moreno bought the Angels soon after, kept the baseball side of the front office intact, and the team won five of the next six American League West championships. Now the time has come for Moreno to hold a series of five-hour meetings, to listen to candidates from far and wide propose a new long-range vision for the Angels.

Kendrys Morales looks good, and he is not only walking without a limp, he's "bouncing around more than we anticipated," Angels Manager Mike Scioscia said Tuesday. Four months after undergoing a second season-ending surgery on his left ankle, the first baseman is walking vigorously on a treadmill set on an incline, lifting weights and undergoing physical therapy in Arizona. There is no timetable for Morales to resume running or baseball activities, but the slugger is confident he will be ready to return for the 2012 season.

Mark Trumbo is mature for a 25-year-old with one year of major league experience. The rookie first baseman says he has "a pretty good perspective on things," and knows hot streaks and slumps are "part of a 162-game season. " But consecutive games like Trumbo had Sunday and Monday night, when he was 0 for 8 with four strikeouts and twice failed to score runners from third with fewer than two out in losses to the Yankees and A's, have strained that outlook. "You're never as good as you think you are, and you're never as bad as you think you are, but sometimes I get way too down on myself," said Trumbo, who leads the team with 26 home runs and 80 runs batted in. "I've had a couple of rough games.

Stout relief pitching has been as much a fixture of the Angels' playoff runs over the last decade as the silver halo above the "A" in their logo. Durable and dependable setup men such as Brendan Donnelly, Scot Shields and Darren Oliver turned it over to reliable closers such as Troy Percival and Fernando Rodriguez to lock things down. The Angels again are in a hot September division race, trailing the Texas Rangers by 21/2 games with 19 to play, including a three-game series against the American League East-leading New York Yankees beginning Friday night at Angel Stadium.

The Angel organization got its first dose of baseball's stiffer drug penalties Tuesday when Karl Gelinas, a pitcher at Class-A Rancho Cucamonga, was suspended 50 games without pay for a first-time steroid offense. Gelinas, a 22-year-old right-hander who was 0-2 with a 7.59 earned-run average in two starts, tested positive for Stanozolol, a powerful anabolic steroid that is not available in dietary supplements.

Chan Ho Park returns to the Freeway Series this weekend, but he won't have Tim Belcher to kick around. The rivalry between the Angels and Dodgers is relatively tame. But, after a decade of interleague play, one play sticks out: Park's kicking Belcher during an on-field fracas in 1999. "I get asked about it all the time," Belcher said Thursday. "They still show it on all the crazy shows where they replay athletes who snap." Park had put down a sacrifice bunt.

You hate to have your closer on the shelf for too long in a heated pennant race. Holding narrow ninth-inning leads in such important games is tough enough. Battling cobwebs can make the job more difficult. But Angels rookie Jordan Walden said there have been benefits to appearing in only three of 13 games before getting his 29th save Wednesday night with a perfect ninth inning against Seattle. For one, Walden's arm feels "as strong as it did in spring training. " The 23-year-old right-hander battled what he called "a little dead-arm phase" in late August, when he blew saves in consecutive appearances against Toronto (Aug.

Vernon Wells was sore from a crash into the left-field wall Wednesday night, but it was his eyesore of a batting average, along with some other hideous numbers, that kept him out of the lineup Thursday night. "He was a little banged up," Manager Mike Scioscia said. "But he was going to get the day off anyway. " (Wells entered the game in the seventh inning and struck out in the eighth.) The Angels are at a loss to explain Wells' dramatic decline since the 32-year-old was acquired from Toronto in January.