9 Worst Moments in Angels History?

Of course Q is a joke. As I said in the note, it is heavy to look at some of the tragedies so I included that for fun…

…and beat that dead horse into jerky.

But if the ST injuries to the fossils, Willits, etc. are a sign of things to come, the Angels might miss those spry legs in the OF.

Yeah, not one person will ever admit it openly, and hopefully the thought won’t cross my subconscious either.

I’d be fine if they brought up Ryan and sent Willits packing…

i was 17, a senior in high school and i had world series tix in my grubby little hands. i camped out all night for tix, i also camped out for lcs tix….i went to the first home game for the playoffs. i remember being at work and being inconsolable after the loss.

Two years ago I was driving south on Jamboree Boulevard to go to the Whole Foods Market. I was in the fast lane going 65 mph (the speed limit) when I passed a car going the same direction I was in the fast lane that was suppose to go northbound. The driver of that car realized his/her mistake and probably first tried to get in the far right lane (which would be the slow lane if he/she was on the correct side of the divided road). A concrete barrier prevented him/her from progressing further right than the fast lane for traffic going the opposite direction. The first reaction typically would be to get back with the cars that are going your direction that are in the correct lanes. The driver of the wrong side of the highway car was slowing down as I passed him/her. When I was 400 feet passed this wrong side of the road car it came to a complete stop. There was a curve up ahead, but the visibility was good for more than 600 feet. A northbound car also in the fast lane interpreted a bad situation, immediately slowed and came to a stop.

I thought whoa! What is going on here? What for we doing this? I exited Jamboree, parked, and entered Whole Foods Market. I walked up to the fish counter and told the fish man about the wrong way driver that I had seen five minutes earlier. I don’t remember what we had that night, either fresh salmon or Chilean sea bass on the bar-be-que. I had something to talk about over dinner! Fortunately, that wrong way incident did not result in a crash.

Yes, I have driven the wrong way on a road. We are not talking 65 mph speed limit here. We are going to downshift to 35-40 mph. After watching the movie "True Grit" with my grandmother Mimi in the summer of 1970 I drove on to the wrong side of a divided four lane road. I am not sure if it was Santa Monica Boulevard or San Vicente Boulevard. It was the only time in my life that I went to that sit-down theatre (there were drive in theatres in those days). When I saw traffic coming towards us in the two lane portion we were in I came to a quick stop and backed up to an intersection where I backed perpendicularly to get out of the way. I had just turned onto the wrong portion of the divided road and was never going faster than 25 mph. It would be quite some time before my grandmother would ride in a car with me after that. I went into the Air Force shortly afterwards so it may well be more than four years later before Mimi got in a car I was driving again.

I also had a wrong way adventure in Tijuana in September 1972. The road turned to the left about 600 feet ahead of me when I first saw cars coming my way. I hit the brakes, got to the side of the road, and did a U-turn when the coast was clear. Fortunately this tourista did not get ticketed for driving the wrong way.

In July 1989 I went to Montreal where I saw the Expos sweep the Cincinnati Reds four straight. After the first game I was looking for a hotel to stay at. I turned on a road that had a "Pont" sign not knowing what "Pont" meant. It quickly dawned on me that it meant bridge. No illegal U-turn for me. I drove more than two miles across either a lake or a very wide river before I had an opportunity to turn around. That is one way to learn a new word!

The worst scenario for a wrong way driving incident would be for it to happen late at night with the wrong way driver driving with his headlights off. I am not sure, but I believe that was the case in the tragic accident Minnie Rojas was involved in. A wrong way driver at night driving with his lights off is either suicidal or a human Improvised Explosive Device (a terrorist on wheels).

Those are all of my wrong way driving experiences. Hopefully I won’t see another one. To get this centered back to baseball, when Whole Foods Market was located in Tustin on Newport Avenue I got to talking baseball with the cashier. She told me that Garret Anderson’s wife had been in the store the previous day and had purchased $600 worth of food. With my family of five I would consider that to be five days worth of food. Bon appetit!

That list has 131 pages. There are eleven linescores on each page. I have been to a total of 1,431 Major League Baseball games. That includes 109 games in 2009. Post your e-mail address and I will send you my 1962-2009 all-time baseball standings. I will also send you a list of all the extra inning games I have been to by year. That extra inning list includes the total games I went each season. From that linescore file it is easy for me to go to BaseballReference.com, dial up Ed Kirkpatrick, and pull up a list of all the home runs he ever hit.

Two weeks from now we will be in Houston. This will be the third consecutive season Roger and I will see Roy Oswalt pitch on opening night. In 2008 Oswalt lost to Jake Peavy and the Padres in San Diego. In 2009 he lost to Carlos Zambrano and the Cubs in Houston. This year I forecast he will go up against Tim Lincecum of the Giants in Houston. All-time Oswalt is 3-5 in games I have seen him pitch. Lincecum is 0-1, Zambrano is 5-1, and Peavy is 7-3 when I am in attendance.

After seeing the Giants and Astros play two games in Houston we will motor up to Arlington to see the Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers play two games. Those will be the second and third games of that series. If we are lucky we will see Vladimir Guerrero hit his first home run as a Ranger. We will then return to Houston for the piece de resistance—a three game Philadelphia Phillies @ Houston Astros set. It was the two-time defending NL Champion Phillies scheduling in Houston that made me decide to return to Houston.

Roger gets two weeks off for spring break. This year the second week is the opening week in baseball. The 2010-2011 school schedule is already out. Next year Roger’s spring break will encompass the first two weeks of the baseball season. My crystal ball forecasts us being in the Tampa Bay-Miami-Orlando triangle in April 2011. We will watch Rays and Marlins home games and fit in a three day stopover at Disney World.

In 2008 after watching Peavy shutout the Astros on opening night we flew to Atlanta to see the Braves play five games. One of those (a Friday night game with the Mets) was rained out. We saw the Braves split two game with the Pirates and sweep a pair from the Mets. The past two seasons we have also flown to games in St. Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis. Each of the past three seasons I have driven to Phoenix to see the Arizona Diamondbacks play a three or four game set. Since Dodger Stadium has changed its name to Divorce McCourt I will be seeing more National League games in San Diego and points east than I will in Los Angeles. I will still go to at least a dozen Dodger games in 2010. My 2009 games included 67 Angel games, 18 Dodger games (two in Anaheim) and 18 Padre games (three in Anaheim). Oh, that June 23-24-25 Yankees @ Dodgers series in Chavez Ravine? I will skip it and watch the Colorado Rockies vs L.A. Angels three game series at the Big A.