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Angels' fantasies come true

Disney's unheralded team climbs baseball's Magic Mountain by doing the small things.

©Associated Press
October 29, 2002

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Troy Percival fantasized thousands of times about throwing the final pitch in Game 7. Strikeout or pop fly, he always won.

Scott Spiezio was 3 when he started imagining himself at-bat in a Game 7. He fell asleep at night listening to subliminal messages on tapes his father played to build his confidence.

Darin Erstad envisioned flying through the air, snaring the last out. He already had made three diving catches in the Series. But for the final out he simply waved his arms in centerfield, settled under the ball with his legs pumping in place, caught it and leapt in one exhilarating motion.

The Angels, the team Disney bought but never loved, took a trip to their own Fantasyland in a Series that showed how good baseball can be and how little the rest of the country cared.

This was a team that deserved more acclaim and a lot more attention than it got in beating the Giants. The record-low TV ratings really mattered only to Fox and shareholders in the parent company, but they reflected the apathy for this World Series outside California.

Too bad, because these Angels were the kind of team that is everything good about sports. A team that emphasized clubhouse camaraderie over star power. A team that believed in itself when nobody else did.

Baseball is a notoriously parochial game. Root for the home team, if they don't win it's a shame and to heck with everyone else. Californians were riveted by the Series and ardent baseball fans nationwide stayed with it, but a lot of others watched the Sopranos or football, or went bowling, or anything else.

Maybe that's what baseball gets for turning off people with strike talk, or what happens when the biggest star, Barry Bonds, is walked 13 times. But true fans know the Series is more than the sum of its stars. It's clutch hitting by unexpected players and pitchers who step up.

In Game 7 it was struggling Bengie Molina and Garret Anderson lunging out of their socks on doubles that scored all the Angels runs, and it was three rookie pitchers who handed off to each other as smoothly as a relay team passing a baton.

John Lackey, five days after turning 24, had been a major-leaguer for all of 125 days. Brendan Donnelly, 31, was pitching in Puerto Rico a year ago. Francisco Rodriguez, 20, started the season in Double A.

They combined for eight innings of one-run, five-hit ball and watched the bullpen ace, Percival, finish it the way he always had dreamed.

There was far less drama in Game 7 than the night before. How could it be otherwise?

The Giants led 5-0 in the seventh inning of Game 6 and seemed to have locked up their first World Series championship since 1954. But in a sea of red, the Angels mounted the biggest comeback by any Series team facing elimination.

With three runs in the seventh, three more in the eighth, a close-out in the ninth, the Angels left San Francisco without a heart.

This Series had the precious little moments and the big ones.

And Bonds erased any doubts he could perform on the grand stage. He batted .417, the highest in a seven-game Series by anyone in 23 years. He homered four times, one shy of Reggie Jackson's record. He had a .700 on-base percentage, the highest in a Series that went more than four games, and he broke Jackson's 1977 slugging percentage record by going 1.294.

As the game's biggest star, he did everything he could but win.

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