Nick Adenhart

Terry Francona has been in tight games and routs. He has managed in the playoffs, the World Series and the All-Star game more than once. So there isn't too much the Boston Red Sox skipper hasn't seen in his 20 years in a major league dugout. But Friday night's game at Angel Stadium, he admitted beforehand, was uncharted territory. Never before had he taken on a team that was grieving over the death of one of its players.

An 11-3 loss to Seattle in Safeco Field, a game in which Ichiro Suzuki capped the Mariners' seven-run seventh inning with a grand slam, was the least of the Angels' concerns Wednesday night. When seven members of your organization are about to fly from Seattle to the Baltimore area to attend a private memorial service for Nick Adenhart, the 22-year-old Angels pitcher who was killed in a traffic accident last Thursday, how can you get too worked up about a baseball game?

As the sounds of silence enveloped the clubhouse, Mike Matheny retrieved a watch from his locker. There is no right way to face sudden death, in life or in baseball. There is no way at all to predict how the Angels might respond to the death of Nick Adenhart, to play out a season over which they have lost all emotional control. Darryl Kile died of a heart attack seven years ago, in the middle of the season. The St.

Four months after Nick Adenhart's tragic death, a makeshift shrine to the fallen Angels right-hander continues to grow outside Angel Stadium. . . . "It's something that fans initiated," Angels spokesman Tim Mead says, "and it will stay as long as fans feel a need for it." . . . Adenhart and two friends were killed early April 9, only hours after Adenhart pitched six strong innings in an Angels loss, when their car was broadsided by an allegedly drunk driver. . . .

It was 108 degrees in Anaheim on Monday, but Bobby Wilson was practically shivering when he saw a television report that the driver in the alcohol-induced crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two friends was found guilty of second-degree murder. "I got the chills — it was the same as when I got the call from Janet [Gigeous, Adenhart's mother] that morning" of the April 9, 2009, accident, said Wilson, an Angels catcher and longtime friend of Adenhart. "I still have them.

The Angels fired scouting director Eddie Bane on Wednesday, informing the 58-year-old that his contract would not be renewed. He has held the position since 2003. Bane, whose two-year deal expires after this season, oversaw a department that was responsible for drafting and developing such highly regarded prospects as Jered Weaver, Kendry Morales, Nick Adenhart, Hank Conger, Peter Bourjos and Mike Trout. But the farm system, among the top five in the game from 2005 to 2007, has fallen to 25th according to Baseball America's most recent rankings.

Reggie Willits joined the Angels on Saturday after a roster move that will forever link the outfielder with Nick Adenhart, the 22-year-old pitcher who was killed in a traffic accident early Thursday. Though Willits is not replacing Adenhart in the rotation -- that task probably will fall on the shoulders of triple-A right-hander Anthony Ortega, who is expected to be called up later this week -- Willits couldn't help but feel a little guilt.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are on the brink of a season to remember. This summer should be a game-changer, a franchise-maker, a preview of rosy things to come. All things considered, the Big A should become the Huge A. The second-fiddle role, the little-brother-to-the-Dodgers stuff that has plagued the Angels for so long, should begin to change with this springboard season. Years ago, in his TV commercials for a camera, a long-haired tennis star, Andre Agassi, confirmed a societal axiom: Image is everything.

A 23-year-old San Gabriel man was found guilty of murder Monday in connection with the DUI crash that killed Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others. Andrew Thomas Gallo was charged with three counts of second-degree murder, felony DUI and felony hit-and-run in the April 9, 2009, crash, which shocked people across the country when it occurred just hours after Adenhart made his first start of the season for the Angels, pitching six scoreless innings. Courtney Stewart, 20, a student and former cheerleader at Cal State Fullerton, and Henry Pearson, 25, a law school student who was building a sports management business, also were killed.

When Jon Wilhite walks across Goodwin Field tonight to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, his father Tony will be by his side, still not comprehending how his son survived the car crash that killed three friends, one of them Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart.