History Relived, Not Rewritten

One swing, sweet and smooth and confident, one huge intake of breath, one bright, white baseball traveling through the night air, high and triumphant and with the hang time of a football, taunting, almost, the Yankees. Home run, Tim Salmon, in the eighth, cementing the lead.

One fastball, thrown too hard to hit far, lofted lazily, falling, slowly, easily, into the glove. Troy Percival threw the pitch, Garret Anderson made the catch.

The 2002 Angels with the longest history, the toughest memories, the saddest stories, finished Friday night’s incomparable 9-6 win over the New York Yankees.

“Everything I’d been told about the playoffs,” Salmon said, “was to just get there because you never know what can happen. Something magical might happen.”

Almost four hours earlier, other Angels, with graying hair and skin toughened by the sun and the wind and the tears, had been invited to Edison Field. To spit in the face of their history, to proudly confront the past, embrace it, celebrate it, the bad and the good but never the magical.

Playoff history, Anaheim style, has been mostly heartbreaking losses, blown leads and awful collapses. But it is the best of Angel history. So members of the 1979, 1982 and 1986 Angels--until now the only three playoff squads in the 42 years of Angel baseball--were invited to stand on the field before Game 3 of the American League division series.

Pitcher Dave Frost, who was 16-10, and Don Baylor, who was the league MVP, represented the 1979 Angels, who lost to Baltimore in four games.

Third baseman Doug DeCinces, who had 30 home runs that year, Fred Lynn, who hit .611 and was series MVP in a losing cause, pitcher Ken Forsch, who is an assistant general manager for the Angels, and Bob Boone, now the Cincinnati Reds’ manager and then a great defensive catcher, represented the 1982 Angels who blew a 2-0 advantage and lost a best-of-five series to Milwaukee.

Pitcher Mike Witt, from an All-Star season, Gold Glove center fielder Gary Pettis, pitcher Kirk McCaskill, who had 202 strikeouts during the year but who was also loser of Games 2 and 6, and Wally Joyner, a rookie who gamboled through a “WallyWorld” season and then missed four games of the playoffs with a staph infection, represented the cursed 1986 team.

And throwing out the co-first pitches were Bobby Grich and Brian Downing, the only Angels to have been involved in all three Western Division titles.

This takes some guts, to bring out the guys who ultimately failed, who could be a symbol of all the bad that has plagued the Angels. But they are also the heart of the Angels’ past, a collection of talented men who, as Boone says, “got some strange bounces and bad breaks and all sorts of things that are just part of baseball.”

Downing says he doesn’t remember emotions.

But then Downing talks about the emotions of elation and then despair he felt in Game 5 of the 1986 American League championship series, when his Angels once led Boston, 5-2, were once a single strike from playing in the World Series, were finally a stunned loser, swallowed up, an entire team, by emotions.

Downing says he pays little attention to the Angels, out on his farm in rural Texas, watching mostly Texas Rangers’ games if he watches baseball at all. But then Downing says, “I’m a fan of baseball, of great matchups. I watch moments. Like Troy Percival versus Derek Jeter in Game 2.”

He calls himself “a cyborg,” and turns to his wife, Cheryl. “Ask her,” Downing says. “She says I don’t have a heart.” But then Downing turns at the crack of a Yankee bat and flinches when Ramon Ortiz throws a wild pitch. He has no feelings for the Angels, pro or con, Downing says, but he twists his fingers in his hands when the Yankees take a 3-0 first-inning lead against the Angels on Friday night at Edison Field.

This is only Downing’s second time back to Edison Field since he was released after the 1990 season, a bitter ending to his Angel career. Downing loved being an Angel, loved how the fans adored his hard-charging style. Downing felt he had been treated rudely by general manager Mike Port, had felt lied to and denied a chance to say goodbye to Angel fans. Downing had been held out of the final game of the 1990 season and Downing will always be convinced Port knew he wasn’t going to offer Downing a new contract.

It wasn’t until Angel fans voted Downing to an All-Angels’ team to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the franchise in 2000 that Downing finally came home. He had been an Orange County kid, had graduated from Magnolia High and had let his anger keep him far from home.

And Downing still fights his feelings for the Angels. He said he almost didn’t come here to throw out that pitch. Downing says it hurts to go on the field without a uniform.

Downing did come, though, and no matter what, he had to have been excited by the end.

History hasn’t been changed yet. These are the Yankees and they don’t lose in the first round. Some day Salmon and Percival and Anderson might be standing at another reunion, gray and wrinkled and proud and sad and talking about the 2-1 lead that got away. But it’s hard to imagine that now. It’s hard to imagine that more magic isn’t on its way.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at diane.pucin@latimes.com