Story By Darren Davis

This is the greater Los Angeles. For every dozen fans dropping expletives in the bleachers of Chavez Ravine, there is a young professional in a Yard House somewhere sitting behind an Amstel Light with his collar unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up watching SportsCenter and complaining about how the Halos get no respect.

For a long while now I’ve been that fan. I’ve sported red in this sea of Dodger blue. I’ve set up shop atop the American League West, sworn by Scioscia as if he invented the small ball. I’ve pulled my hair out trying to get my friends to explain why the Angels are the number two ballclub in LA despite the same history that blue-bleeders cling to. Honestly, there’s has been a flawed logic, at least in recent years.  But after again watching my team be pushed aside by Boston in the first round of the playoffs, I see that mine is too.
 
The Angels are forgettable baseball club. Mainly because no one can decide whether they under or overachieve. Such peaks and valleys are just too contradictory for anyone outside of Orange County to care. And like a fair-weather friend, I can only make excuses for them for so long. I’ve had enough.

So I hereby relinquish my right to claim that the Angels are deserved of big-market respect. And I would encourage the rest of the 714 to do the same.

The franchise is built around doing just enough. Every year the organization seems to believe they are capable of going all the way, and the team usually provides sufficient evidence of such during the regular season. But every postseason they prove that they were just that: sufficient enough to get to October, but not enough to go deep into it.

Recently, the mantra has been that the Angels were  “just one big bat” away from a complete team. When general manager Bill Stoneman picked up Gary Matthews Jr. in 2006, the acquisition was just enough to at least quell the obvious need, but not enough to keep them from getting beat up by Boston in 2007, where the Halos and their big bat scored 5 runs in the 3-game sweep.

Then the front office did just enough by firing Stoneman and replacing him with the younger Tony Reagins who, to his credit, made a few unexpected and unpopular decisions in the 2007 offseason by trading fan favorite Orlando Cabrera to the Chicago White Sox for starting pitcher Jon Garland and dishing out serious cash for Torii Hunter, who was touted as the big bat the replace the other big bat.

And it was just enough for the Angels to win games during the first half of the 2008 season.  Just enough so that they lead the league in 1-run wins, allowing K-Rod to come out in the 9th inning and be just enough to eventually win 90% of those games and break the single season save record.

Then Reagins surprised everyone by picking up Atlanta first baseman and legitimate big bat Mark Teixeira at the trade deadline, a move that made the Angels favorites to win it all.

It wasn’t enough. 

The one I have been convinced of this season is that the Angels failure in October is as consistent as flooding in the Midwest. And like those poor, small towns, my team is somehow always surprised once the rain comes, tossing a couple of sandbags in the way of the inevitable.

This year, our sandbags were named Howie Kendrick and Erick Aybar, who successfully negated the impact Teixeira had in the lineup by combining for less hits than my dad’s blog.  Or would it be more fair to say that it was the former’s bobbled double play and/or the latter’s now infamous failed bunt that allowed Boston to rally late in the game and clinch the ALDS?

If it’s not one thing, it’s another. The Angels remain lukewarm in their mediocrity. I know that now. Either way, this October was hard to swallow. So I won’t.  I’ll let it go. The culture of my team must change before they can command the respect they feel so entitled to. Without the history of perennial like the Dodgers and Cubs, we are just a dandy regular season team that is no fun to watch in the postseason because our egg laying has become part of the game.

At least there’s always next season.

Until then, Go Blue!