Brave New Free-Agent World for Angels

It was 1976, baseball’s first free-agent winter, and Gene Autry couldn’t resist.

Neither could Red Patterson and Harry Dalton, who were running the Angels and trying to win one for the Cowboy.

The result?

A spending spree that tended to rattle the industry and now represents a yardstick on free-agent inflation.

In order, the Angels signed:

* Don Baylor for six years at $1.6 million.

* Joe Rudi for five years at $2.01 million.

* Bobby Grich for five years at $1.55 million.

That was slightly more than $5 million for three of baseball’s best players and enough to prompt then-Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley to compare Autry and other free-spending owners to a “den of thieves.”

It was also enough to make history, standing for 28 years as the most renowned series of winter signings in Angel history, often eclipsed by dollars but not in terms of the impact at the time.

Now, Arte Moreno has wiped it off the boards.

There is nothing in the club’s 43 years to compare to his $145.75-million acquisitions of Bartolo Colon, Kelvim Escobar, Jose Guillen and now the vaunted Vladimir Guerrero.

Of course, it was in another time but the same general place that the often frustrated Autry was reminded that nothing is guaranteed.

Rudi was plagued by injuries for most of his Angel tenure. Baylor won a most valuable player award and combined with Grich to help the Angels win two division titles, and Grich contributed to another.

If Buzzie Bavasi, Dalton’s successor as general manager, hadn’t suddenly drawn a financial line amid a personality spat and refused to make Nolan Ryan baseball’s first $1-million-a-year player after the 1979 season, prompting Ryan to depart as a free agent and leaving Bavasi to forever call it his biggest mistake, Autry’s tormented Angels might have won a World Series with Grich and Baylor in ’82 and another with Grich in ’86.

The oft-chronicled Ryan episode is another story, however, and too sad to relate again.

Now, there are no guarantees for Moreno either, no certainty how it plays out, but if there are long-term questions about Guerrero’s back and Colon’s beltline, what is high reward without high risk?

Moreno and General Manager Bill Stoneman have assembled a World Series-caliber team that can be said to boast the deepest pitching in baseball and potentially the strongest lineup.

Bill Bavasi, the former Angel general manager who holds a similar position with the division rival Seattle Mariners, didn’t put it that way Sunday, but he said:

“I think everyone was picking them to win the division even before they [acquired Guerrero], and he certainly doesn’t hurt their chances. Given how good this guy is, I don’t think he’ll have any problems adjusting to a new team and a new league -- unfortunately -- but we’re not conceding. We’re very happy with our team. We plan to show up and give them a good run.”

The question is, are the Angels really through, as Moreno and Stoneman suggested they were after the Colon signing?

Many of Moreno’s more cautious peers, some of whom choose to pocket their revenue-sharing checks rather than reinvest in their teams, are having trouble with that $145.75 million.

The Angel payroll is now at $108 million and counting, and one president of an American League club paused when asked about Moreno’s ongoing splurge Sunday and said, “Do I want to say something about it? Of course I do, but not in an L.A. paper.”

For the small-market A’s, who have dominated the division while being outspent every year, it looms as just another challenge.

Owner Steve Schott and General Manager Billy Beane couldn’t be reached Sunday, but they’re likely to take it in stride, as Bavasi did.

“Am I surprised by the way Moreno has gone about it?” the Seattle GM said. “Not really. It’s different for a single owner who doesn’t have a board of directors or a corporation [to whom] he has to answer. He can wake up in the morning and say, ‘I think I’ll have a Guerrero for breakfast,’ and he does.

“Is he done? I guess so, but then I thought he was done before [signing Guerrero].”

With the acquisition of Guerrero enhancing his already attractive product, part of all this is Moreno’s hands-on belief as a career salesman that he can take the Angel brand beyond the Orange Curtain.

He isn’t specifically aiming at the Dodgers when he says that, but make no mistake:

At a time of ownership paralysis up the freeway, the Angel buildup -- truth be told -- has been a deeper body blow to the Dodgers than the 2002 World Series victory by the Angels.

That was one year and one time, the Dodgers hoped then.

Now Moreno has taken the play away again, collecting enough weapons to chill the Dodgers with visions of an Anaheim dynasty.

Of course, it’s a long way to October, all those ghosts to overcome again after a wave of injuries swept through the Angels last year just when they seemed to have buried them under a shower of 2002 champagne.

The point being that Guerrero and his new teammates haven’t won anything yet, and Gene Autry would remind them that nothing is ever won on paper -- no matter how green or how much of it there is.