Who Goofed? I’ve Got To Know!

This past Sunday, a game was played in Oakland between the hometown Athletics and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The game went long, and was tied 3-3 going into the bottom of the 12th inning.

The game was telecast to Southern California on KCOP/13 of Los Angeles.

The A’s loaded the bases in the bottom of the 12th. Chris Bootcheck was pitching for the Angels. The batter was Oakland 2nd baseman Mark Ellis.

Bootcheck goes into his windup and delivers. Ellis swings and hits a walkoff grand slam home run for a 7-3 Athletics’ win. The crowd at McAfee Coliseum goes crazy. The entire A’s bench greets Ellis at home plate. Joy permeates the air in Oakland.

Oh, and one other thing: The viewers in Southern California never see it.

Just before the pitch is thrown, color bars appear on the screen. Then, the screen goes black with the KCOP logo in one corner. Then a commercial runs. Following that, the 1997 movie “Smilla’s Sense of Snow”, starring Julia Ormond, begins running. No game. No announcement. Nothing.

Angels Vice President Tim Mead blames the snafu on miscommunications on the production end. “It was some kind of miscommunication between the parties who oversee the satellite feed.”

Production staff in Oakland took the necessary steps to extend the satellite time window as the game went long, nearly four hours. However, the connection went black at precisely 5 p.m.

The glitch apparently resulted from problems between AT&T and Vyvx, the satellite carrier for Sunday’s game.

Added an obviously angry Mead: “We’re going to get answers.”

I’ll betcha Heidi was never like this.

July 20, 1969

In order to properly begin July 20, 1969, I need to backtrack to the early 60s:

San Francisco Giants manager Alvin Dark is talking to a reporter about his young, talented left-handed pitcher, one Gaylord Perry. Perry is showing everyone why he’s a future Hall of Famer, but his hitting, Dark says, is leaving something to be desired. In other words, the Giants may as well have 8 batters in their lineup card. To quote Dark:

“They’ll put a man on the moon before he (Perry) hits a home run.”

Fast forward to July 20, 1969.

The Giants are playing a home game. Gaylord Perry is pitching. This is the night of the first moon landing. Jeff Chandler, the Giants’ public address announcer, informs the crowd that according to news reports, Apollo XI has indeed landed on the moon. The crowd cheers loudly. Everyone is excited and happy. The game is held up slightly to let the cheering take it’s course.

The game resumes. About 10 minutes following Chandler’s announcement, the batter is Gaylord Perry. What is the result of his at bat? Perry hits his first major league home run. Right after the moon landing.

File this one under the category of “you couldn’t have made this one up.”

Angels, 1971

This past Thursday, the LA Angels of Anaheim saluted the 1971 California Angels with a “Throwback Day”, wearing the uniforms of 1971, which featured a lower case “a” on both the cap and jersey. They were worn for only the one year.

Why the recognition, though? Even though they didn’t finish last, 1971 was arguably the worst year in Angel history.

The General Manager was Dick Walsh, who had been brought in at the beginning of 1969. Previously, he had been a non-personnel executive with the Dodgers, and had been commissioner of the National Soccer League, which had just folded.

The manager was Harold (Lefty) Phillips, previously a pitching coach with the Dodgers. Upon arriving with the Angels, it was only a matter of time until Walsh was going to fire the popular original Angel manager, Bill Rigney, and replace him with his toadie Phillips. That’s just what happened in late May of 1969. Long story short, Lefty Phillips had no business being a major league baseball manager.

Left fielder Alex Johnson had won the American League batting title the previous season. The team had traded for Tony Conigliaro, who was considered on the way back from a vicious beaning that had blurred the vision in his left eye. The Angels were favorites to win the American League Western Division.

The season was a total disaster.

The team was ripped to shreds by dissention, which adversely affected their play. Much of the tension was centered around Johnson, who seemed to display a lack of effort at times. Phillips suspended him, but was later overruled by baseball arbitrators. He still refused to use him.

Conigliaro failed to hit his weight. His eyesight was still an issue. One night against the Oakland A’s, he struck out 5 times. After the last strikeout, which was swinging, he went into a rage, cussing at everybody and everything. The home plate umpire understandably ejected him. At that point, Conigliaro threw his batting helmet up in the air and swung at it. He missed. Badly. And went into a bigger rage. Teammates had to get him back into the dugout and in to the clubhouse. The next morning, without the benefit of sleep, he announced his retirement. A horrible way for a once promising superstar to go out. And sad.

There are varying versions of what happened, but what is known for sure is that utility infielder Chico Ruiz pulled a gun on Alex Johnson in the clubhouse. It was supposedly a joke, but it put a pall on the team that lasted all season. The Angels became the butt of jokes.

As things turned out, Johnson was a victim of team viciousness as home fans jeered and taunted him. According to Marvin Miller, then head of the players union, the Angels were rife with old-time Southern racism within its roster. The daily torture made Johnson, well, crazy. He needed professional help, and got it.

In 1989, I met Clyde (Skeeter) Wright, a pitcher with the ‘71 Halos, and a native of Tennessee, and I asked him about the situation. He told me that he personally had gotten along fine with Johnson, but others had problems. I noted to myself that he didn’t say Johnson was the problem.

One anecdote that surfaced: one of the players who constantly tormented Alex Johnson approached him one night after a game. He told him a big sob story, started crying, and asked him if he could borrow $5,000, then a huge chunk of a player’s salary. Easily over 10% of most players’ pay in 1971. Without blinking, Johnson was going to write him a check. The player, totally shocked at Johnson’s impending generosity, stopped him, and told him he was only kidding.

The 1971 Angels were known as Hell’s Angels. They earned that label.

The team finished last in the AL in runs, but were 3rd in team ERA. The dreary season continued on and on in front of record numbers of empty seats. By season’s end, Anaheim Stadium resembled a picture postcard of an empty ballpark.

Walsh, feeling heat from above, fired his pal Phillips, who passed away a short time later. Walsh, nicknamed “The Smiling Python” by the players, was fired soon after, with four years left on his contract. Johnson, after receiving the needed professional help, was traded to Cleveland and was able to save his career, hitting .287 for the Indians. He said he liked it better there. Chico Ruiz died a short time after the season ended in Puerto Rico in a car accident. Tony Conigliaro, after failing comeback tryouts with the Red Sox and Giants, suffered a stroke and went into a coma that lasted for two years before he passed away.

It makes me marvel all the more: Why commemorate 1971?

My Very Own Sports Fantasies

Like anybody else, I have a lot of sports fantasies. On very rare occasions, a few have come true, such as the NY Jets beating the Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III. Another was Pete Rose, a player I absolutely hated, getting into deep molasses late into his career.

Here is a list of more of my sports fantasies. Of course, some can’t happen because of death or the passing of many years. I still wish they could have happened anyway.

I wish that someone would have beaned George Foster. He always drove me crazy when he would step out of the batter’s box just as the pitch was being thrown. I would have loved to have seen him do that against Don Drysdale or Bob Gibson. He would have stopped that nonsense quick.

I would love to have seen someone, anybody in the media, question Bear Bryant on why it took him so long to integrate his Alabama football team. His first African American freshmen arrived in 1970, and made their Crimson Tide debut in 1971. The Civil Rights Act was enacted in 1965. The SEC’s first African American athlete, a basketball player, made his debut at Vanderbilt in 1967. As it was, Bryant was far more powerful in the state of Alabama than George Wallace could have ever hoped to be. He could do both anything he wanted and do no wrong. But the national media botched their chance. I wouldn’t have hesitated to ask. Bear Bryant owed plenty of answers on that matter. He didn’t deserve the free pass that he got.

I always dreamed of shoving Red Auerbach’s cigar straight up his keister. An L.A. radio reporter once tried to in a hotel elevator during the NBA Finals in 1985. They got into it, but it got broken up. Auerbach may have been a major reason for the Celtic’s legend, but he was one of the poorest winners ever in sports.

I wish Angel Stadium of Anaheim would be re-done the way it used to be before the Rams moved there in 1980. They’ve knocked out most of the extra seating since the Rams left, but there are still remnants, such as luxury boxes and outfield seating. I get it that the suites are now an economic necessity, but I would love to see the outfield seats taken out, and the original Big A scoreboard, now an advertising sign in the parking lot, moved back into it’s old left field position. Back then, as far as I was concerned, Anaheim Stadium, as it used to be called, was the greatest little ballpark in the majors. And the city of Anaheim sullied it.

I would have loved to have seen a World Series played in the Astrodome.

I wish Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar could have played just one game against each other. It never happened. Russell retired the season before Kareem entered the NBA.

I wish that the Baltimore Colts, Houston Oilers, and Montreal Expos were still around. I miss them.

I wish that Jackie Robinson could have played in L.A. with the Dodgers. He was from nearby Pasadena, and played four sports at UCLA. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley knew long in advance that he was moving the team to Los Angeles. Why wouldn’t he keep Jackie Robinson?

It’s a shame that Willie Mays had to spend the bulk of his career playing in Candlestick Park in San Francisco. If he had been able to play in a decent ballpark during his prime, he might well have had over 800 home runs. Candlestick’s architect should have been flogged.