1992: THE YEAR IN REVIEW : ORANGE COUNTY Sports: problems outweighed successes. : Goodby to Numbed ‘90s, Year Three

Eisner Buys Angels, Orders Herzog to Trade for Jim Abbott .

Eisner Buys Rams, Orders Shaw to Sign Free Agents Steve Young, Reggie White, Lorenzo White, Wilber Marshall and Neil Smith .

Eisner Buys Brett Hull and Mario Lemieux, Asks ‘Why Can’t an Expansion Team Win the Stanley Cup?’

--Wishful thinking on the first day of 1993

Who says you can’t buy happiness?

Try us.

So far during this depressed decade, known in these parts as The Numbed ‘90s, most of Orange County’s sporting enterprises have taken a bye from happiness.

The Angels? Three seasons of 82, 81 and 90 losses, not counting Devon White, Dante Bichette, Dave Winfield, Wally Joyner, Kirk McCaskill, Mike Fetters, Lance Parrish, Bryan Harvey, Junior Felix and every Abbott in the organization.

The Rams? Three seasons of 11, 13 and 10 losses, including a 15-game losing streak against division rivals that only ended last Sunday.

Cal State Fullerton? The school has a new $10-million on-campus football stadium--and, now, no football team to play in it. Another losing basketball season cost Coach John Sneed his job. A $1.2-million wrongful termination lawsuit, filed by former volleyball Coach Jim Huffman, hangs heavy over the head of Athletic Director Bill Shumard. And the pride and joy of Titandom, Augie Garrido’s Big Orange Machine, gripped the county for a wild C10 days in Omaha before it, too, lost in the title game of the College World Series.

UC Irvine? Otherwise known as CU Later? Athletic Director Tom Ford--gone. Tennis coach and South County laugh track Greg Patton--gone. Mike Gerakos and the entire Anteater baseball program--gone. Rod Baker came to town just in time to say goodby to most of his colleagues--and then his first Irvine basketball team greets him with a 7-22 season.

This third installment of our own private trilogy of terror--1992--was an Olympic year, traditionally a time for Orange County’s strongest and swiftest to lift the summer months out of their doldrums. Local medal aspirants arrived in Barcelona by the planeload, but only Janet Evans returned with anything gold-plated. Evans won the county’s lone gold medal in the women’s 800-meter freestyle--with a time five seconds slower than her winning time in Seoul. She also placed second in the 400 freestyle, losing the event for the first time in six years and 18 international competitions.

*

The most uplifting sporting development in Orange County in 1992 was also the most harrowing--the May 21 crash of an Angel team bus on a midnight ride from New York to Baltimore. The bus skidded off the New Jersey Turnpike, was mangled by a thicket of trees and nearly toppled down a 20-foot embankment. It could have been a horrific tragedy for a franchise that has known far too much grief in its 32 years, but, miraculously, most of the passengers disembarked by their own power, sustaining nothing worse than a badly shaken set of nerves.

The most serious injuries were suffered by Manager Buck Rodgers, who broke a kneecap, an elbow, a wrist and two ribs when the paneling by his seat was crushed during the collision. Rodgers missed more than three months while he rehabilitated--third base coach John Wathan managed the team in the interim--but Rodgers returned to the dugout on Aug. 28 and remained with the team for the season’s final 34 games.

That was the best local news of 1992.

Runner-up?

We had to wait till the very end, till Dec. 10, but we finally found one. It came in the form of a stunningly casual announcement from the NHL’s Board of Governors meetings in Palm Beach, Fla., where the owners voted in a new commissioner, Gary Bettman, decided to table a vote on a 1994 Olympic Dream Team . . . and, oh, by the way, granted expansion franchises to Anaheim and Miami, with the plan for both to begin play as soon as next season.

Disney Chairman Michael Eisner played Santa Claus for Orange County, dashing off a $50-million check and stealing the ensuing press conference by wearing a green “Mighty Ducks” jersey, from the Disney movie of the same name, and joking (we hope) of adopting that name for his newest, nonfictional hockey property.

The Anaheim Mighty Ducks?

A wave of protest instantly swept through the region, asserting that no burly defenseman worth the wiring in his jaw would allow total strangers to call him a Mighty Duck.

Hundreds of alternative nicknames were faxed and phoned to local newspaper offices. The Aladdins. The Fantasmics. The 0-60-1 Dalmations. The Genies. The M-Ice-Kateers.

They say you can’t buy this kind of publicity, but Eisner, obviously, is proving otherwise.

*

The Disney/NHL merger was announced at the end of a cataclysmic five days.

On Sunday, Dec. 6, the Angels opted to ignore the lessons of history and treated their most popular player since Nolan Ryan the same way they ultimately treated Ryan. They got rid of him. Jim Abbott to the Yankees for J.T. Snow, Russ Springer and Jerry Nielsen is the latest trade that will live in infamy, a trade the Angels insist they were forced to make (Abbott refused to accept their four-year, $16-million offer) even though they weren’t (Abbott doesn’t become a free agent until 1995), a trade that cuts so much deeper than just another three-bodies-for-one transaction.

By trading Abbott, the Angels lost not only their only marketable player--what now? “DiSarcina World”? “Ortonmania”?--but they also lost their last shred of credibility among fans who regarded an Angel home game as something more than a diversion from the Disneyland/Knott’s Berry Farm/Chuck E. Cheese family-outing circle. Coming on the heels of the Joyner giveaway, the Winfield giveaway and the Harvey giveaway, the Abbott trade represented the final selling out of on-the-field considerations in favor of in-the-Autry-bank-account considerations.

After three decades of unyielding disappointment, the Angels, by decree of Gene by way of Jackie Autry, have repositioned their priorities.

If we can’t win a pennant, they are now saying, we are then going to cut our losses.

If we can finish sixth with a $34-million payroll, why not finish seventh at $26 million? Only the Orange County die-hards will know the difference.

Well, the Orange County die-hards have spoken, as well as the school kids who want to know why Abbott will be pitching against the Angels next season, and the post-trade tumult stung the front office into some desperation cosmetic surgery.

Within a week of the Abbott deal, the Angels brought in Kelly Gruber and re-signed Chili Davis, the prodigal DH. Gruber is 31 and batted .229 last season. Davis turns 33 in January and had 12 home runs in ’92.

It’s a youth movement.

It’s an aging veteran movement.

It’s two, two, two movements in one.

From now on, call them Team Certs.

*

On Dec. 7, Orange County also said farewell to its Division I-A football team, which wasn’t quite the crowd-pleaser Abbott was, but did have its moments, once upon a time.

Cal State Fullerton had lost its football program once before, for eight days in early 1991 before university President Milton Gordon interceded with what amounted to two seasons on life support. At the time, Gordon said he wanted to see the athletic department’s fund-raising drive run its course and see if Gene Murphy could rehab a program that had finished 1-11 in 1990.

Back-to-back 2-9 seasons followed, and in the midst of the second, Murphy called it quits. Five days after an embarrassing defeat at home against Division II Sacramento State, Murphy announced his resignation, effective at the end of the season, and somewhat fittingly, the program that would have gone nowhere without him got off the highway the same time Murphy did.

Technically, Gordon did not eliminate the Fullerton football program; he “suspended” it. At the moment, the official blueprint calls for no football in 1993 and a restoration of the program at the Division I-AA level in 1994. But Cal State Long Beach similarly “suspended” football in 1992 and is enjoying life without The Big Headache so thoroughly that the suspension has been extended indefinitely, so you never know.

Minus Murphy’s IOU-Writin’ Titans, Orange County football will have to proceed with the Pigskin Classic (which never draws, even with Stanford in the game), the Freedom Bowl (which only draws with Fresno State in the game), the Rams, the preps and the community colleges.

As usual, the preps and the community colleges did the area proud. Los Alamitos and Esperanza high schools waged two memorable struggles during the same season--Los Alamitos winning, 34-14, during a regular-season roll in the mud before the Griffins and the Aztecs played to a 14-14 tie in the Division II championship game. Sunny Hills High upset Rancho Alamitos, 14-13, to win the Division VII title, raising Tim Devaney’s collection of underdog champions to three. And Saddleback College, led by Marcellus Chrishon’s 1,748 rushing yards, went 11-0 and was ranked No. 1 in the nation.

The Gauchos’ final triumph, over City College of San Francisco in the Orange County Bowl, left Coach Ken Swearingen with 241 career victories--tying him for most in the country with former Fullerton College Coach Hal Sherbeck, who retired before the 1992 season.

(In other sports, the Corona del Mar High girls’ volleyball team was 23-0 and No. 1-ranked nationally; the Brea-Olinda girls’ basketball team won its third State championship under Mark Trakh; the Mater Dei boys’ basketball team went 34-1 before losing to Jason Kidd and Alameda St. Joseph in the State final, and the El Toro water polo team won its fourth Southern Section championship in five seasons.)

*

The Rams?

Well, there were some new faces, such as Sean Gilbert and Marc Boutte, and there were some old new faces, such as Chuck Knox, returning to his old NFC West stomping grounds after 15 years in the Great Northwest and the Not-So-Great Northeast. But when all was said and fumbled, it was still the same old Rams--saddled with 10 losses, tied for last in their division.

Oh, the Rams can look back and pull out a ruler and measure some progress.

They hired the coach Georgia Frontiere wanted--and gave Knox unprecedented authority over the football operation, a step in the proper direction.

They drafted a bright young defensive lineman in Gilbert and signed him the same day, another step forward.

They doubled their victory total from ’91 to ‘92, which sounds very impressive until you check and see that the ’91 Rams finished 3-13.

They even beat Dallas, in Texas, ending a road losing streak that had reached a highly unhealthy 12 in a row.

But 6-10 is still eight games out of first place and six out of second place. The defense is still 27th in a 28-team league, and the offense is still vexed by Cleveland Gary’s fumbles (nine, tarnishing a 1,100-yard season) and Jim Everett’s now-consistent inconsistency.

Still, the Rams give the appearance of building toward something, as opposed to the other Anaheim Stadium tenant. Knox had a good first draft and is eager for another. The NFL’s first real taste of true free agency will provide Knox instant solutions to long-standing problems, provided Georgia gives him the money.

And, under Knox, though often overmatched, the Rams never gave up. They rallied from a 27-3 deficit to win a meaningless early-December game in Tampa. They rallied from a 20-14 deficit to win a meaningless season finale against Atlanta.

This is where Knox made his mark in 1992. After two years of when’s-dinner listlessness, these Rams played hard.

Knox called it a start.

*

We’d like to end this piece on an up note, so we’ll try not to dote on the financial woes that all but gutted the UC Irvine athletic department. Suffice it to say that the budget ax Tom Ford was forced to wield was so unsightly that Ford resigned shortly after eliminating the baseball program, opening a vacancy at athletic director that went unfilled for more than four months. And, it was so scary that resident flake and tennis scholar Greg Patton, a presumed dyed-in-the-snout Anteater-for-life, high-tailed it to safer ground, which the rest of us refer to as Boise State.

And we won’t dwell on the 22 losses Rod Baker endured as Bill Mulligan’s mop-up man, although we will mention one victory--over top-seeded UC Santa Barbara in the opening round of the Big West tournament, the biggest upset in its history.

No, we’d rather fade out with a wide-angle shot of Omaha’s Rosenblatt Stadium--wide enough to capture Phil Nevin’s grand slam against Florida State . . . and Cal State Fullerton’s charge back through the losers’ bracket . . . and James Popoff weathering a virtual hurricane to weather the Miami Hurricanes . . . and that body-slamming, heart-stopping nationally televised final against Pepperdine, when a diving stop by Wave second baseman Steve Rodriguez was all that separated the Titans from a third NCAA baseball title.

Those heady days of late May served as a much-needed reminder as to what sports can be, and what they ought not to be.

No greed.

No contract-dumping.

No selling the fans short just to save a few more dollars.

No pulling up short on that sinking line drive just to save the body for a September salary drive.

This was the pure experience--just a group of 20-year-old baseball players, too naive to know you’re not supposed to slam into outfield fences, you’re not supposed to dive into first base to beat out infield grounders, you’re not supposed to cry when you’re done and you’re spent and you came up one run short.

Soon enough, they’ll learn that you only cry after you sign the $43.75-million contract.

Silly kids. Is that any way to make a lasting impression?

Try us.