2002 Remembered, part 2

A funny thing happened on the road to the playoffs in 2002.

I can remember being at the old "Big A," the 65,000 seat monstrosity with capacity crowds. Once was a July 4th game sometime in the mid-eighties, another was on August 13, 1989 against the Oakland A's. Seeing the old Anaheim Stadium filled with fans was a thing of beauty, a true feeling of being part of something big.

But for the most part, games back then were played in front of a mostly-empty stadium.

My wife recently bought me the DVD A Red Dawn Rises: The Story of the 2002 Anaheim Angels and while watching this 2-hour montage of the championship season, I was struck by something. In April of 2002, while the Angels were off to their first World Series Championship, the stands of the new and improved "Edison Field" were only half full.

Empty seats were common until recent Angels history, and memories of small crowds are part of the nostalgia held firm in the minds of old-time fans. As the Angels are a Southern California team, it's to be expected and accepted that when they're winning, they're going to draw more.

The upsetting thing to me, though, was the "fans."

I've long been used to the ridicule that Angels fans take, or at least used to take. LA Clippers fans used to laugh at us for loving such a hopeless team. So when I used to go to "The Big A," it was a common site to see more of an opposing team's jerseys on fans in the crowd than those sporting Angels gear. Then suddenly, I see the 2002 ALDS on TV and what do I see in the stands?

A sea of red so uniform that, were Moses to descend from heaven onto the pitcher's mound at Edison Field, he would not be able to resist the urge to part it.

The whole 2002 playoffs, as I sat watching at home or elsewhere, there was one thought I couldn't get out of my head: How many of these people in their red caps and jackets were wearing Yankees or Red Sox gear during the regular season and rooting AGAINST the Angels? How many had never bought a piece of Angels clothing until they went to the playoffs?

Much of this was probably due to my jealousy from not being able to score tickets. But, as it turned out, even if I had been able to buy tickets for the ALCS, I never would have been able to use them.

You see, I have a dirty little secret. As an Angels fan, there's not much October magic to remember. So when talking to other Angels fans, it's pretty much assumed that you've seen the recent postseason success. I remember the 1986 ALCS, I remember Donnie Moore giving up that shot to Dave Henderson, but I was too young in 1982 or 1979 to have cared much about the playoffs at all, even though my team was in them.

But now, four years later, I have a confession to make.

I didn't see a single game of the 2002 ALCS.

Yes, I know, the impression I've tried to make in you since I started this blog has been shot to hell. There's no way I can be a true Angels fan if I missed the playoffs in 2002. Sure, anybody can jump on the bandwagon and watch the World Series. But if you couldn't be bothered to watch the Angels get there, you aren't a real Angels fan, are you?

Well, let me explain the circumstances to you.

As Game 1 of the 2002 ALCS opened in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome against the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday, October 8, 2002, Orange County sat entranced in front of their televisions. As the National Anthem was sung and the game started, I was with about 120 other men from B Co 1/160th Infantry in our armory in Orange, California. As the Angels lost Game 1 to the Twins 2-1, I was on a bus en route to Ft. Irwin, about half way between Orange County and Las Vegas out in the Mojave desert. As baseball was played in Minnesota, I sat with an M-249 SAW (above) in my lap and wondered about the game and my Angels.

We went out to Ft. Irwin to waste thousands of tax dollars on the firing range, qualifying with the M-16 and (for awesome soldiers like I) the M-249 SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon), an 800 round-per-minute can of whoop-ass that, as was the case with me, is usually carried by the smallest, scrawniest guy in the squad. We slept on the range, under the Mojave stars, bundled up in our issue sleeping bags and neither shaving nor showering nor changing clothes for our entire stay.

I volunteered nightly for fireguard, making me quite popular amongst the other soldiers. I took the shift from 11 PM to midnight, a shift soldiers hate due to it requiring you to go to bed for an hour or two, wake up, then try to get back to sleep for a few hours before wake up.

I took it so I could climb up into the range control tower, set my cell phone to "roam," and call my dad.

Roaming is expensive, so my calls were kept to a couple minutes. And with the exception of "Hi dad," "I love you dad," and "Goodnight dad," the conversations revolved around one main topic: How did the Angels do tonight?

On Sunday morning, October 13, 2002, we boarded busses and made our way back to our Armory. The Angels had taken a 3-1 series lead the night before, and as we unloaded our gear into the Armory in Hart Park in Orange, Game 5 was underway. A weekend in the desert for a civilian is dirty enough. For a soldier, it requires hours of cleanup. So as we unloaded the bus at around 2 or 3 PM, we knew we wouldn't be dismissed until well after dinner time. We laid our weapons inside the Armory and prepared to start cleaning.

But a funny thing happened on the way to weapons disassembly. Out in the storage building, one of the supply sergeants had a clock radio.

While about half the Company was inside cleaning weapons and gear, the other half of us were huddled around a small radio in a tin-roofed shed, surrounded by gas masks and ruck sacks, listening to the game. We tried to stay as quiet as possible, but as the game went on, as Adam Kennedy hit one, two, then three home runs, as the outs dwindled away for Minnesota, the excitement built.

And as the Angels shut down the Twins in the 9th inning and Rory Markus (I think he was announcing, at least) let his excitement burst through as he announced that the Angels were going to the World Series, the cheers erupted and a bunch of dirty, grimy, stinky soldiers jumped up and down in a celebration that probably looked much like what was happening at Edison Field just a few miles away.

The Angels were going to the World Series.

to be concluded...