Alexander: Can the Angels finally meet the expectations of their fans?
ANAHEIM — Yes, it’s a small sample size, one early-season crowd out of a potential 81. But the sense I got from the 44,534 at Angel Stadium on Saturday night is that these are fans who are desperate to shout with joy.
It’s a fan base that has endured. It’s endured the indignity of having two of the world’s best players on a team that not only can’t get to the playoffs but hasn’t gotten to .500 in seven seasons. And it has endured an owner that, quite frankly, has become almost universally unpopular. Angel fans were ready to celebrate when Arte Moreno announced he was selling last summer, and transitioned to a collective foul mood when he announced in January that he’d changed his mind.
The stadium is serviceable but aging. (It’s still far easier to get out of than Dodger Stadium, so count your blessings, Angel fans.) The plan to develop the surrounding property and pay for serious renovation is in limbo following the corruption allegations that led to Anaheim mayor Harry Sidhu’s resignation, but there is optimism that new mayor Ashleigh Aitken – a fan and season ticket holder – can help revive the project after the city council scuttled it last year amid the political firestorm.
Really, can anyone doubt the loyalty of the Angel faithful? All that they’ve endured, and they’re still here.
And they were in full voice Saturday evening, when their team spotted Toronto a 4-0 lead and rallied. When Mike Trout sent a 3-and-1 pitch in the general direction of the rocks in left-center, for a three-run homer and a 7-4 lead in the fifth, the place was rocking. When Hunter Renfroe added a two-run homer for insurance in the eighth inning of an eventual 9-4 victory over the Blue Jays, it might have been even louder.
(Incidentally, Angel fans are lucky in this sense. They can and do chant “M-V-P” for both Trout and Shohei Ohtani – and I’m guessing some of the same folks chant for both – with the understanding that either is possible and both are worthy.)
Is there something special brewing here? Who knows. It’s way too early to project. Do the fans feel like it could? More to the point, do they want it so badly they can taste it? It sure seems that way.
“I think any time you have a (playoff) drought, and you have such a great team on paper,” that fan anxiety can mount, newcomer Renfroe said. “Obviously the seasons haven’t been going as well as they thought (they) would in the past, and obviously we have a lot of talent this year and we want to go as far as we possibly can.”
For perspective, Renfroe was in San Diego as part of the Padres’ four-year rebuild – I’m guessing the fans down there still remember the night at Petco Park in 2016 that he hit a home run off the Dodgers’ José de León that landed on the roof of the Western Metal Supply building in left field – and he was traded to Tampa Bay at the winter meetings in 2019, just before the Padres’ process started to bear fruit and just in time for the Rays to reach the World Series.
“I was … on a lot of the losing ends in San Diego, and to see how their program has adjusted and how the fans responded to them winning, it’s pretty special to see,” he said. “So I hope to bring it here. The fans were incredible tonight.”
Renfroe did his part Saturday night, providing insurance with a two-run, 413-foot shot to left field in the eighth inning to make it 9-5. This was a few innings after another of the Angels’ newcomers, Gio Urshela, turned what probably should have been an infield hit into three bases with his legs, a play originally scored a triple but later changed to an infield hit and error on Toronto shortstop Bo Bichette.
And no, manager Phil Nevin said, he’d never seen an infield triple before.
“When Gio was coming up (in the eighth) I said, ‘You’ve had a nice night, an infield triple and an infield single,’ ” Nevin said, before being informed that the official scoring had been changed. “I mean, I think it’s either an error or it’s a triple.
“Either way. I think it’s a tough play. It hit off his foot on a bad hop and goes out into right-center, and (left fielder George) Springer’s doing what he’s supposed to do, he’s backing up third. And then the center fielder (Daulton Varsho) is probably running over to get the ball in case it gets by Bo. So you just had an open field out there.”
Trust us, it will be on highlight shows and in clips on social media for a few days. (And as those who watched in real time or watched the replay will attest, that grounder not only befuddled Bichette but it fooled the director of the telecast.)
This Gio Urshela grounder up the middle turned into a triple pic.twitter.com/E0N79Tnz2S
— Brent Maguire (@bmags94) April 9, 2023
Saturday night’s home runs drew the biggest reaction, as you’d expect. But plays like Urshela’s are what the game hasn’t had nearly enough of in recent years. So far this season under the new rules, we’ve seen more action on the basepaths – including one successful steal (by Luis Rengifo) and one player thrown out stealing (Bichette, by Angels catcher Matt Thaiss), and far less wasted time. What’s not to like?
There is, admittedly, lots of hope in lots of places as the recalibrated game gets its season going. In Orange County in particular, where the 2002 World Series championship and playoff appearances in 2004, ’05, ’07, ’08 and ’09 helped bolster a fan base that surpassed 3 million in home attendance 17 straight times from 2003 through 2019, there’s a feeling that all of that hope expended over all of those years needs to finally be rewarded.
Can you blame Angel fans for feeling that way?
jalexander@scng.com