Angels return to familiar surroundings after clinching AL West
ANAHEIM, Calif. – Jered Weaver is one of the guys around here who used to do this every summer. There aren't many left. He stood in the infield late Wednesday at Angel Stadium with a bottle in his hand, his thumb over the opening, preserving every drop.
"It's different," he said, smiling, happy again. "Different, but familiar."
For the first time in five years, the Angels are champions of the AL West. They beat the Seattle Mariners 5-0 for their 95th win, watched from their clubhouse as the Oakland A's fell apart again, then rushed together to the field, caps backward and goggles secure, like a disjointed and slightly giddy special ops unit.
"It feels like the first time, it's been that long," Weaver said. "But it doesn't take long to remember this feeling."
Once, not all that long ago, the Angels would do this plenty. That was before Mike Trout, before Albert Pujols, a couple general managers ago, when the organization was healthy and resilient and knew how to win, if not always for quite long enough. That was five years ago, when the sullen Octobers started to pile up. As a franchise, they'd won, they'd staggered, they'd lost their way, and then they tried to remember how to hold one of these parties again.
"That's why I came here," said Pujols, in his third season as an Angel. "We've accomplished a good thing. We haven't accomplished everything."
The Angels were four games behind the A's on Aug. 10. Three weeks later, they were five games ahead of the A's. Two weeks after that, they led by 11 games. And when the A's pushed their collapse through the ninth inning Wednesday night, the Angels' lead was 11½, with 10 games remaining. By all appearances the best team in baseball in mid-summer, the A's had simply forgotten how to win. The Angels lost two starting pitchers to season-ending injuries, and won. They rebuilt their bullpen, and won. They leaned on Trout, the likely AL MVP, and a healthy Pujols, and a maturing Kole Calhoun, and the rookie Matt Shoemaker, and they won. Amidst concerns his velocity abandoned him, Weaver won 17 games. Howie Kendrick and Erick Aybar, two holdovers from the days of routine AL West titles, combined for nearly 160 runs and 140 RBI.
The world had long ago narrowed its eyes and wondered whatever happened to the Angels. It had wondered how a franchise adds Pujols and C.J. Wilson on the same winter day and still could not compete. It watched as that franchise signed Josh Hamilton a year later and still was good enough for only third place. It fawned over Trout, swooned over how skilled he could be so young, and waited for a day the pitching staff would do him justice and help deliver him to October.
Then, on an unusually muggy night, they watched together as the last-place Texas Rangers took out the A's, and shouted as one. They took a lap around the field, down the left-field line, then diagonally to the right-field corner, and the 5,000 or so fans who'd stayed held out their hands and chanted their names.
"What they did over the last two months," manager Mike Scioscia said, "it's incredible."
Garrett Richards, who'd blown out his knee in Boston nearly a month before, hopped on one crutch, his leg braced and wrapped in protective plastic. Tyler Skaggs, lost to Tommy John surgery, toasted with his right arm; the left was cloaked in a green trash bag. Like so many teams in 2014, the Angels were forced to go deep into the system, long into their bench, and late into the trading deadline. And so Huston Street ran alongside them, and Jason Grilli could not stop smiling. Collin Cowgill was as drenched as C.J. Cron, as Efren Navarro, as John McDonald, and they all ran together.
This is what it used to be here, before the Angels became something else, something less. Just a year ago, Scioscia and general manager Jerry Dipoto were defending their cool relationship and insisting they could work together, and owner Arte Moreno fired neither, and instead held them to that promise. So the fireworks came, and the music blared, and the people screamed, and it all started to look vaguely familiar again. Not all the faces. But what was on the faces. Not all the names. But in their deeds.
"I think it's pretty special," Pujols said. "The city and the organization have been waiting. It's been tough over the last few years. Hey, sometimes it's good to wait."
He smiled.
"But," he said, "here we are."
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