Disney Up Against Big A Wall

Today was supposed to be the first baseball playoff game at Anaheim Stadium in nine years.

Yankees at Angels.

Jack McDowell vs. Chuck Finley.

A huge crowd--considering the stakes, maybe even 39,000--rocking out to “Atomic Dog” and “Slow Ride” and “Born In The U.S.A,” all the while with Cleveland on their minds.

Instead, the Big A today is an empty vessel, locked in dry dock. No Angels-Yankees. No Rams this Sunday, either. A whole lot of nothing is going on, all because of two nine-game losing streaks in September and one 9-1 disintegration on the first Monday of October.

Where do the Angels go from here?

More significantly, where do the Angels’ fans go from here?

That is Disney’s migraine now, just as soon as the Angels’ transfer of operational control is formally approved by Major League Baseball. Approval is academic--Major League Baseball already kneels at the foot of The Mouse. But if there’s a potential deal-breaker now, it’s Disney, whose master marketeers must be staring at photos of Mark Langston on his back and putting the slide rule to the Angels’ fall-off-the-wall-chart post-August curve and scratching their heads.

“We’re supposed to sell this ?”

“Who do they think we are, marketing geniuses?”

“Do you think we can take our 25% and make a run at the Mariners instead?”

As far as Disney promotional uphill battles go, EuroDisney just slid into the back seat. Disney’s reputation for being able to sell ice-makers to Eskimos, Pocahontas dolls to 5-year-old boys and ugly duck hockey jerseys to college-educated adults is about to go back, back, back, up against the wall.

Angel fans, hardened and dubious even before The Collapse, were staying away by the tens of thousands with the team up by 10 games in mid-August. When playoff tickets went on sale on Sept. 20--a momentous, once-a-decade kind of event--only 300 wannabelievers showed up at the Anaheim Stadium box office to purchase on spec.

How are you going to bring them back to the yard now that they’ve seen Dan Masteller and Benji Gil and Luis Sojo and have taken the solemn oath, “Never, never, never again”?

The 1996 season-ticket campaign should be a wonder to behold.

“Free Passes to Space Mountain If We Blow An 11-Game Lead This Year!”

“Come On Back To There’s-No-Tomorrowland!”

“Indiana Jones Never Saw A Temple of Doom Like This!”

“Magic Mountain’s ‘Free Fall’ Has Nothing On Ours!”

Maybe some new players might help.

The more the better, actually.

Rex Hudler or Damion Easley at second base? Disney may not know baseball--they bought the Angels, didn’t they?--but even they know they have to do better than this.

Disney memo says: “Have we ever looked into this Luis Sojo person?”

Right-handed starting pitcher. Now the Angels realize they need to have at least one, preferably one not named “Shawn Boskie” or “Mike Harkey,” ideally one who can win a game after Labor Day.

Disney memo says: “Randy Johnson would be good. But no mustache. No hair over the collar, either. The Disney way or else.”

Third base. Tony Phillips is a free agent, approaching 37, played like it down the stretch. But he walked 100 times, scored 100 runs and believes he can parlay those numbers into some serious “cake”--at least $2 million next season some place else, unless the Angels match.

Disney memo says: “Let him eat cake.”

Catcher. What, exactly, was Andy Allanson, a Class-A catcher in 1994, doing starting a one-game playoff for the AL West championship? Watching him flail away in the batter’s box against Johnson was the audio-visual definition of the term “overmatched.” The Angels need big help here--someone who can hit (unlike Allanson), throw (unlike Greg Myers) and stop balls in the dirt (unlike Jorge Fabregas). Of course, so do about 26 other big-league teams. The line forms here.

Disney memo says: “Talk to Selig about eliminating this position. Think of all the money to be saved on equipment.”

The ex-Cub problem. Basically, the Angels have too many of them--Boskie, Harkey, Mike Bielecki, Lee Smith and Scott Sanderson. Many have theorized this is why the Angels lost to the Mariners, whose roster includes no ex-Cubs.

Disney memo says: “Fewer ex-Cubs and more ex-Blue Jays. Besides Dick Schofield.”

Elsewhere, the Angels have to make a decision on Finley and Jim Abbott, both potential free agents. Of the top three pitchers in the starting rotation, only Langston is signed for next season. Finley won both of his must-win assignments last week--in Seattle Wednesday, against Oakland to clinch the tie last Sunday--and Abbott stopped both nine-game losing streaks. Langston, Disney already knows about.

Disney memo says: “We can only afford two of the three. See if Langston has a loophole.”

The long, cold winter is upon us--and it’s only Oct. 6. Disney will find out soon enough that these are no clean-slate expansion Ducks. The Angels come attached to decades of self-fulfilling prophecies and enough baggage to pack up all of Anaheim and send it to Disney World. Team Samsonite is what Disney just bought into.

If it truly is too late to turn back now, better keep those ’96 feel-good slogans coming.

“The Next 35 Years Can’t Be Any Worse--We Promise!”