At 15, Angels 1995 Collapse a Wistful "What If"

Beautiful midnight time bomb, Rev.

Baseball will not exist because of the overspending of our government and the future taxes that will have ti be in place, I will be regaling my children with the wondrous 2002 season by showing them my worn thin DVD of the series. Baseball will be outlawed by our ruler and king Obama, who named himself ruler of all, and has decided if the White Sox can’t win the series every year then baseball should be outlawed.

I didn’t realize the OJ verdict was contemporaneous to the 1-gamer in Seattle.

Well, I stayed home from school that day (college) and watched the game. I had been a fan for nearly 12 or 13 years at that point and had followed the 1995 daily on the radio that summer as their offense was pummeling opposing pitching on a daily basis.

I had given up when Seattle overtook them the last week – but the fact that they got to the playoff really had me hoping for a miracle. But, the Big Unit was a monster then – and for nearly his whole career – and it just wasn’t to be.

The sad thing about that game was the chance of success. The faux inside-the-park homer by Sojo was just a microcosm of the Halos for as long as I had been a fan. It was 1982 in Milwaukee all over. It was Dave Henderson. Again! It was Joyner’s injury. It was Rich Gedman and Gary Lucas in the 9th inning of what should have been Mike Witt’s coming out party!

Ugh – it was a horrid day. I wish it had been 9-0 in the 2nd inning; I’d have let it go. But that it was close until the 6th or 7th inning only made the utter meltdown that much harder.

It’s funny – that team had more offense than any in my memory (save 1982, maybe). Phillips, Salmon, Edmonds, Chili, a non-lazy GA and even J.T. Snow hit pretty well that year.

But that pitching. Shawn Boskie, Mike Bielecki and Mitch Williams(!).

Anyway, thanks for the reminder – that team sure was fun to watch.

I was having my bachelor party, a sedate affair because my brother, a Mormon, was best man. But that was okay by me, because after the season just ended I was in no mood for a bacchanalia. Fortunately for me, however, I didn’t have any time to dwell upon the Angels’ epic collapse, and I really didn’t have the inclination, either, because my happiness at the impending nuptials trumped everything else.

Still, I cannot wholly banish the memory of Mark Langston sitting on home plate (or thereabouts) holding his head in shame and despair. At that moment, I felt much the same way.

it was certainly humiliating. the angels will forever be linked to the greatest collapse in sports history, and they’ll only ever be able to say it was because their #9 hitter went out with an injury. DiSar was my favorite player at the time, and Langston my favorite pitcher, and this game plus his putrid WS performance against the Padres will always stick in my mind.

It’s hard to swallow and you get tired of seeing it brought up, but it was Randy freaking Johnson, and besides, 7 years later, we took the whole ball of wax while also denying Barry Bonds a WS.

Junior in college, on the Salvation Army bought couch in the living room of our apartment. Had to work that night but I would be able to watch some of the game due to the afternoon start. My football fan roommates were bemused that I cared about this game. I tried to be optimistic but in the back of my mind I knew we could play that game a 1000 times and we would never beat Johnson.

Gene Autry died on this date in 1998.

At that age I had too many other things drawing my attention away (girls). I was an all out nut till that strike kicked it all the way gone. (I thought) So when I met THE girl, she had no idea that I even liked baseball, or the Angels. So she thought she married a guy who didn’t care about sports. Which I don’t for the most part even to today. (Excepts Angels baseball of course) So one day a co-worker of mine gave me free Angels tickets, and once I crossed that stadium threshold, I was back. Back like never before. And I brought 4 new Angel fans with me.

bought season tickets for the second half of the season … I brought my gramps (who was living in elder care at the time) to several games to pay him back for all the games he treated me to in his aisle 29 seats from 1979 to 1989. I got season seats to ensure playoff tickets for the old man, since he never believed they would make the series. This was the year … they were going to have another chance.

Gramps passed on in 1998. I shed tears for him and grams when the Halos won in 2002, as they attended faithfully for 10 years never seeing a pennant.

As for the game, I was actually at work that day. I listened to most of the game on the radio. “Here lies Mark Langston” was the image on the highlights and in the papers the next day. Ugh.

Came home from school after falling off the monkey bars. Listened to the game on the radio in the car with my mom all the way to the Doctor’s office. On the way back home I vividly remember her asking me “Did you play this up so you could watch the game?”

It was the first playoff chase that I really remember. I remember the excitement when Percy saved game 162 and thinking “We got this.” I remember the confidence I felt when I found out Langston was starting game 163. I remember the tension as we traded zeroes with Seattle.

Then I remember that Sick feeling in the pit of my stomach after Luis Sojo scored while Langy just sat there at the plate after two of our best defensive players (Snow, Langston) blew chunks all over the field in the same play. The rest of the game is a blur until Salmon struck out on a pitch looking (it was off the plate anyway). I remember crying, and I remember my dad telling about me ‘79, ’82 and ’86. I had always been an Angel fan, but didn’t have precise memories of those years.

I never thought I would see a World Series championship until 2002 saved us all. Even though my dad and I both thought during game 6 “Is this as close as we’ll ever get?” But we won, and ’95 was dimmed for me. Kinda like that bad dream that you still remember, but it bothers you less than it used too because now you know better than to believe that be the truth.

15 years ago was my official start. You could say that I went through Hell to get to Heaven.

The one-game playoff loss wasn’t that shocking because the collapse had been going on for several weeks. I recall turning off the TV, a loud curse word, and that was it. ‘95 only added further proof for me that the Angels would never win a World Series and that they’d always choke.

Except 2002 happened. Yeah. The 2002 playoffs was one hell of a ride. I watched every pitch of every game and kept waiting for the epic choke/Dave Henderson moment.

So I’m actually glad ‘95 happened, as well as 82, ’85, ’86, ’98 and all the sucking in between for the Angels. Otherwise the off-the-charts exhilarating joy of 2002 wouldn’t have been possible.

and my parents were going through a horrible divorice and i have blocked out all those memories and dont remember anything until i was 12 and that is the honest truth. My love for baseball helped me thtough the divorice more then anything. and because i was a gluten for punishment and hated myself and losing was a norm i became an angels fan in 1999. Then they won in 2002 and life was great until the next year but then great again in 2004 until Jose and AJ ruined our second championship in 3 years.

Great write up

I was in 5th grade, 10 years old, and thought it was the coolest thing in the world that the team I had picked when I was like 4 off a sheet of stickers that came out of a cereal box was about to go to the playoffs. (Ok, we lived in Anaheim when I was 4, so maybe I had some coaxing and prior knowledge, but I recognized the shape of California on the sticker and thought the “A” with a halo was sweet, get over it) It was supposed to be the coolest day of my life. (I didn’t know what sex was and yes, a win would still have been better)

Then someone dropped a fly ball.

Then Mark Langston fell apart.

Then Tim Salmon struck out.

I ran upstairs crying in hopeless rage and demolished my closet door (what, it looked like a Mariner). None of this shit was supposed to happen, I thought. I questioned my faith in humanity, and just about everything really. I questioned my own existence. My parents didn’t even get mad about the closet door, that’s how I knew what I had just witnessed was pretty much Armageddon.

I hated Randy Johnson for years after that. I even found it difficult to cheer for him against the Yankees in the 2001 World Series. That game in 1995, along with a d-bag coach I was stuck with soon after, played a major role in the brief falling out I had with baseball for a few years. I seriously never fully got over it until GA hit that 3-run bomb off Johnson in NY during the 2005 ALDS and the Angels went on to eliminate that ugly SOB and his stupid team.

Nice write-up, Rev. Wasn’t expecting a trip down memory lane this morning.

with my walkman in my backpack and an earbud in my left ear, listening to the Unit and Langston going at it. By the 7th, my dreams had evaporated.

and I cried for the rest of the night……….The summer and early fall of 1995 almost killed me as a 12 year old boy.

That woulda sucked.

Plus I was still pissed about the strike.

It hurt, but 1986 was (and still is) a much more painful memory.

went home to watch the one game playoff, felt betrayed like in 82 and 86. It sadly meant that while I remained a fan, my commitment to the team waned until the 2002 season and even then I always believed that the 02 team would break my heart, it wasn’t until Glaus’ double in Game 6 that I had hope and Angel faith restored. So with me, 1995 can’t be separated from 1986 or 1982.

Thank goodness I was not old enough to remember the collapse.

We were gathered up and told that OJ Won and the Angels lost.

I was a very sad 5th grader.

Probably read about the collapse occasionally through the Bloomberg machine in our office, and the line-scores in the IHT. Like a lot of stuff from back then, the memory isn’t so sharp. Basically, I’m missing out on about a decade of fanaticism, from around 1987 (sophomore year in college) to 1997 (last year living in Europe).

I feel the ’82 collapse much, much, much more sharply than ’95.

No internets, and no radio coverage of the game where we were (New Mexico is my best guess). I think we had to read about it in the free USA Today in the hotel the next day. Awful.

21 years old, working at Sundale Country Club as a Golf Cart Attendant, with a load of co-workers who were member’s kids wrecking shit (Country Club member’s kids have to be the most wildest group-they think they no more than you, get more girls than you, drink more than you, smoke more weed than you, etc).

The crazy thing is. I knew we were going to lose. I really believed in an Angel Curse. I mean 1986 still weighed heavily on me, and reading Ross Newhan’s the California Angels fully convinced me that we were going nowhere soon.

Now at 37, I still believe in curses, but nothing as trivial as spells cast upon a sports team. That was the beautiful thing about being 21: wide open to everything, closed to nothing.

 I had just graduated from Basic Training and was stuck in a dorm room in San Antonio, Tx listening on the radio. No TV in the room and the common area was taken by some video game players. That was a miserable night, and many trees outside the building paid the price for it that night.

The British media re-played every minute of the OJ trial, but baseball? What’s that? In fact, my husband and I didn’t return to the U.S. until 1999, after having served overseas in both Scotland and Spain (baseball-free yet wonderful years). So, thankfully, I did not have to to endure the pain of ’95.

This was a really great write-up. I enjoyed it immensely.

In ‘95, I was stationed in South Korea in the Army. I had followed the Angels since ’88 when I joined through the Stars N Stripes newspaper and some very rare games on Army tv. It was so great to open the paper and see us dominating. Come Sept of ’95, I was leaving the Army and I was planning to get playoff tix as soon as I touched ground in Cali. But the collapse was beginning and it was so unbelievable watching the tie breaker. But I’ve hung in there and the payoff’s have been great. I figured a losing season was coming soon. I’m very confident it will not last.