FREEWAY SERIES BECOMES FREEWAY SERIOUS : For Angels, It’s a Chance to Show Up Big Brother

The Angels and the Dodgers!

Tonight at Dodger Stadium on the third Tuesday in June!

Together for the first time in a Freeway Series game that really matters!

So reads the hype, at any rate, surrounding this evening’s first regular-season encounter between the Blue of Los Angeles and the Periwinkle, Navy, Medium Blue, Light Blue, Red, Gold and Bronze of Orange County.

However, as a card-carrying alumnus of both organizations, Bill Singer begs to differ on one point.

After his trade from the Dodgers to the Angels before the 1973 season--a trade he describes as “traumatic”-- Singer pitched against his former teammates in the traditional, presumed-to-be-inconsequential preseason Freeway Series.

“That wasn’t just an ordinary spring training game,” says Singer, now a scout for the Florida Marlins who lives in Costa Mesa. “You always wanted to beat the other team--me, especially, after being traded. I wanted to show they made a mistake by trading me.”

Or demoting him, as was the undercurrent involving any Dodger-to-Angel trade during the teams’ first, oh, quarter-century or so of coexistence.

It was akin to being shipped to triple-A or dropped to junior varsity--a cruel eviction notice to vacate the palace for the cold curbside.

The Dodgers had the pennants and the World Series championship banners flapping in the breeze, the gemstone of a ballpark, the legacy of Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Don Newcombe, “The Dodger Way to Play Baseball.”

The Angels? Forever scrambling, scuffling and trying to play catch-up. And, as Singer puts it, beginning many seasons “in spring training knowing already that you’re just playing out the string.”

Singer remembers discussing Angel prospects one season with Nolan Ryan during training camp in February.

Singer: “So, do you think we have a chance this year?”

Ryan: “Nope.”

Singer: “Neither do I.”

That thinking began to change only after Gene Autry paid dearly for free agents named Bobby Grich, Don Baylor and Reggie Jackson, followed by division championships in 1979, 1982 and 1986.

But to those who played and worked for both organizations, the perception of the Dodgers as poised big brother and the Angels as heel-nipping straggler has been a hard one to break--even at this late date, with the Angels, at 36 1/2, approaching middle age.

“With the Dodgers, the Freeway Series was not that big a deal,” says Geoff Zahn, who pitched for them from 1973-75 and the Angels from 1981-85. “But the Angels, I think, always had the feeling of being the second kid on the block. They had something to prove.

“And, of course, everybody wanted to beat the Dodgers, just like everybody wants to beat the Yankees. The Dodgers and the Yankees are generally considered the two most successful organizations in baseball.”

Tradition is the biggest difference between the teams, according to Joe Ferguson, who had two playing stints with the Dodgers (1970-76 and 1978-81) before spending three seasons (1981-83) with the Angels.

“Part of the Dodgers’ tradition was winning,” says Ferguson, who was also a coach with the Dodgers from 1988-94 before becoming manager of the double-A Bowie Bay Sox in 1996. “Part of the expectations every year was that the Dodgers would wind up playing in the Fall Classic. Some years with the Angels, I imagine they were happy with .500.”

Ron Fairly played for the Dodgers during their first years in Los Angeles (1958-69), finished his career with the Angels in 1978 and then spent eight years as an Angel broadcaster--1979-86--a period that included all three American League West titles, as close to “glory years” as the Angels get.

“I don’t know that the Dodgers ever considered themselves to be in competition with the Angels, because they were dominant for so long,” says Fairly, now a broadcaster for the Seattle Mariners.

“I was there when the Angels won their division titles, but I don’t think one or two years are going to do it. To really change things, it’s going to take [the Angels] winning four or five years in a row.”

Buzzie Bavasi, who served as general manager for both clubs, agrees.

“When I was with the Angels, I always said that my biggest competition was not Chicago or Cleveland or Detroit,” he says. “I always felt I was competing with the Dodgers. We’re in the same area, vying for the same fans.

“The Dodgers never felt that way. I don’t think they have to really. Twenty thousand people go out to Dodger Stadium every night to find out why the lights are on.

“The Dodgers had a great organization for 50 years, and it came west with them. . . . The Dodgers do things the way they should be done. The Angels are starting to do that now. It takes time.”

Bavasi isn’t without bias when it comes to the current state of the Angels; his son, Bill, sits in the general manager’s chair. Hence, Buzzie’s assessment of the two teams meeting at Dodger Stadium tonight:

“To me, the Angels are a more attractive club. Not better--don’t get me wrong. But that catch by that young man [Jim Edmonds] the other night--I have seen Willie and Duke and Mantle and none of them made a better catch than that.”

Bavasi laughs.

“I’m glad I’m not the general manager saying that, because I’d have to pay him more money.”

Being more attractive helps, but the only really effective way to compete in the same market as the Dodgers, Bavasi claims, is to “put a better team on the field than the Dodgers do. Not as good, but better. If you do that, you’ll draw well.”

The fans, Bavasi says, “want a good show. Whether you were with the Angels or the Padres, you had to prove to the fans that you were better than the Dodgers. The fans know the Dodgers are good. They’re not sure about the Angels or the Padres.”

Bavasi oversaw the Angels’ free-agent free-for-all in the late 1980s, when he used a hefty chunk of Autry’s self-made fortune to try to buy the organization credibility.

“The Dodgers have 27,000 season customers,” Bavasi says. “In 1978, the Angels had 6,500 season customers. We went out and signed Rod Carew and it jumped to 12,500. Then we signed Reggie and it jumped to 18,500.

“You have to have marquee players. The Dodgers always had a marquee player. With the Angels, we had to have a big name too. Reggie was about as big as we could do. People bought tickets in the right-field stands just so they could boo him.”

Also important to the development of a home fan base: ballpark aesthetics.

The Dodgers have an ageless beauty--”Dodger Stadium looks as good today as it did 30 years ago,” Bavasi says.

The Angels counter with Anaheim Stadium, as faceless--and as pennantless--as it was 30 years ago. Look at the naked steel girders now in right field and the construction barricades on the terrace level. The best that can be said about the place is the same that can be said about the team:

The Angels are still working on it.

“I really loved Dodger Stadium,” says Zahn, currently the baseball coach at the University of Michigan. “I think it is, and always has been, one of the top parks--a great place to watch a game, always kept in immaculate condition.

“I really liked Angel Stadium before they closed it in for football. I hear they’re going back to the way it used to be, with the open outfield. That’s good. That adds to the character of the park quite a bit.”

As for the fans who routinely hang out at both parks, well, there seems to be some variety of opinion among the Freeway Series Alumni Assn.

Bavasi: “The Angel fan is a baseball fan. He knows the game, enjoys the game, stays till the end of the game. The Dodger fan comes out to be seen. It’s the thing to do, to be seen at Dodger Stadium.”

Ferguson: “I can safely say the better baseball fan is at Dodger Stadium. There you have a lot more transplanted people, people from New York who grew up with baseball and the Dodgers. Dodger fans tend to be more knowledgeable fans.”

Fairly: “A lot of people go to Angels games to pull for the visiting team. We’d get booed at our own park. I remember Dave La-Roche telling me, ‘The reason we get booed is because so many people here are transplants from the Midwest and the East.’ So at Anaheim Stadium, you’ve got people from Boston, Chicago and Detroit who boo the Angels because they’re rooting for the team from their hometown.”

Ferguson: “With the Dodgers, we’d always have a big crowd when teams from New York, Chicago and Philadelphia were in town--all those people who grew up there and moved to L.A. Half the stadium would be rooting for the other team.”

Tonight, the greatest one-way rivalry in baseball takes its first dip into the regular season. Because these next two games--followed by two more in Anaheim July 2-3--count in the standings, the great hope is that the Dodgers, at last, might get interested.

“The Dodgers have always felt very confident in their control of the market,” Fairly says. “Having won [five] world championships [in Los Angeles] always helps.

“The Angels have really tried hard. . . . They try to draw people, they try to win, they try to have stars.

“The Dodgers always have marquee players. The Angels brought in Reggie and Carew and Baylor and Grich, but they never did quite capture the imagination of the Southern California fan.”

Why not?

“Everybody loves a winner,” Fairly reasons.

Especially in October.

The Angels wouldn’t know, but at least they have tonight. If nothing else, it’s a start.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Angels vs. Dodgers

* Tonight’s game: 7.

* Tonight’s pitchers: Angels’ Chuck Finley (3-5) vs. Dodgers’ Chan Ho Park (5-3).

* TV: Channel 9.

* Radio: KTZN (710), KABC (790), KWKW (1330).

* Wednesday’s game: 7:30 p.m.

* Wednesday’s pitchers: Angels’ Dennis Springer (4-2) vs. Dodgers’ Hideo Nomo (6-6).

* TV: Fox Sports West 2.

* Radio: KTZN (710), KABC (790), KWKW (1330).