What starts with Percival ends well with Rodriguez

On opening night, the Angels began with the closer.

Fireworks filled the sky and a huge American flag was unfurled in the outfield and held in place by more than 100 people. The national anthem was sung with the gusto it deserves, and the big screens at Angel Stadium kept it alive with pictures of soldiers in uniform, jets in formation and Olympic athletes in red, white and blue.

Then the door to the bullpen opened, a husky guy in a No. 40 Angels jersey and blue jeans tossed aside his cup of water, sprinted in from left field and walked briskly across the infield dirt. By the time Troy Percival scuffed the mound with his spikes, the sellout crowd of 43,906 was standing, remembering and thanking with waves of applause.

The man who saved 316 games for the Angels, most in team history, looked to home plate, where current catcher Jose Molina was waiting. The man who was on the mound at the end in Game 6 and Game 7 when the Angels closed down the San Francisco Giants in the 2002 World Series set, kicked and delivered. It might have caught the corner.

“I just want to hit the glove,” Percival said before the game. “But I might throw it off the back screen.”

Manager Mike Scioscia was taking no chances. “I’ll be hiding out in the dugout,” he said.

The big-screen TV showed: Radar gun, 101 mph. That was bogus, of course, but all in good fun. As was the entire pregame ceremony for the 37-year-old Angels legend.

After 10 years and those 316 saves, the Angels asked Percival to stay in 2005 as a setup man for the new young gun in the bullpen, Frankie Rodriguez. Percival said he wanted to be the last guy out, still thought he had it in him, and so did the Detroit Tigers, who gave him $12 million for two years.

Not long into his first season with the Tigers, Percival blew his arm out and has not been able to come back. Now, he has retired. As an Angel.

Just before he threw out the first ball Monday night, he signed a one-day minor league contract with the Angels, so he would officially retire as a member of the team formerly known as Anaheim.

“I guess I never burned the bridge here,” said Percival, who added later, “I never left the Angels’ organization in my heart.”

Percival is a throwback. This is the day and age of playing on a winning World Series team, getting paid $10 million in salary for that, and then announcing on the day of the victory parade that you are going elsewhere next year for $15 million. Loyalty in major league baseball is like tobacco. They chew it for a while, then spit it out.

Percival cared beyond his next paycheck.

When he got his 300th save in 2004, he interrupted a picture-taking session in the clubhouse to call over Rodriguez to be in the pictures too.

“I wanted him to be part of it,” Percival recalled. “He was the future.”

Percival also said that he tried to pass on his experience to an Angels bullpen that now ranks as one of the best in the majors. He called setup man Scot Shields “one of the top five relief pitchers in the game today” and said he always felt privileged that Shields asked him for advice over the years.

He called Rodriguez a player with “electric stuff” and said that, while Frankie was very young when he came up late in the World Series season of 2002 and didn’t listen to a lot of advice at first, “He’s learned so much now, progressed so much. He knows now the difference in coming in with a two-run lead, rather than a one-run lead. He knows this isn’t just about your ERA.”

Rodriguez, one of 13 children from Caracas, Venezuela, has taken on the legacy of Percival with fire and determination. He is 25 and already ranks third in Angels history with 106 saves.

“When I cross that line, when I go from the bullpen to the mound, I’m a different person,” Rodriguez said. “When I was a kid -- I started playing baseball when I was 3 1/2 -- I always played with the older guys. I had to be aggressive, and I’ve never stopped.”

Monday, it went the way Scioscia wants games to come to his bullpen. John Lackey started against Texas and went five innings. Left-hander Darren Oliver struggled and made way for Justin Speier, who got out of Oliver’s jam and gave way to Shields in the eighth.

Shields blew the Rangers away, striking out two, and on came Rodriguez, who was asked before the game what he thought of the days of Eric Gagne going in to close for the Dodgers, with the big screen flashing: GAME OVER.

“I don’t know that I’d want us to carry it quite that far,” Rodriguez said, “but when I go in there, I’m pretty confident. It is over.”

At 9:47 p.m., with the Angels’ lead at 4-1, Rodriguez exited the same bullpen gate Percival had earlier. He walked to the edge of the grass, pumped his right fist and sprinted to the mound. The same fans who had stood for Percival stood again.

By 9:55, Frankie Rodriguez was pointing to the sky in gratitude and celebration. Rockets were exploding.

The Angels had ended as they began. With the closer.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.