6.2.00 ANAHEIM ANGELS vs LOS ANGELES DODGERS

I'm not a huge fan of interleague play—I don't quite understand why baseball's decision-makers are so eager rid it of those things that make it unique among sports—but I gotta say: the last three years of regular-season Freeway Series games have provided some of the most exciting, intense, and just-plain-fun baseball memories you'll find between my ears (or, if we are to believe Rupert Sheldrake, in my morphogenetic field).

Who can forget 1997 in Anaheim, when tougher-than-leather Dodger back-up catcher Tom Prince got up in Tony Phillips's grill after Phillips took exception to a Chan Ho Park pitch, and bench-clearing mayhem ensued (a story that attained new poignancy a few weeks later, when Phillips was caught smoking crack in a motel room across the street from Disneyland)? Or Anaheim again in '98, when Dodger scrub Matt Luke's tenth-inning home run put L.A. ahead, only to have fellow Dodger scrub Jim Bruske walk in the winning Angel run moments later? Or—perhaps most unforgettable of all— last year at Dodger Stadium, when Chan Ho Park went kung fu on Angel pitcher Tim Belcher's ass, resulting in more bench clearing, ejection for Park, and a Devon White grand slam off Belcher in the following inning?

The other reason I've loved these games is the company of my buddy Chris Damore, life-long Orange County resident and long-suffering Angels fan. I know, I know. “Angels fan?” you're asking. “Angels fan? Could such a thing actually exist?” I'm here to tell you, it could and it does.

It's a strange thing, this notion of Angels fandom. The phenomenon of devotion to terrible baseball teams is a familiar and well-documented one, with examples ranging from Chicago's lovable and usually laughable Cubs to Boston's accursed Red Sox. In both cases, the psychology at work is understandable. The Cubs have been so bad for so long that their perpetual ineptitude has become sort of charming; they are the classic underdog, and who doesn't love an underdog? There is an undeniable safety in rooting for a team you know is going to lose, and therein lies the much of the appeal. The Red Sox, on the other hand, fielded a number of genuinely good teams over the course of the last century, but not one since 1918 was able to win a World Series, and when they lost, they lost spectacularly. Fans, heartbroken, devastated, nevertheless kept coming back for more, compelled perhaps against their better judgement by the knowledge that they had, indeed, been that close. In each case, and the significance of this should not be underestimated, the teams are aesthetic triumphs, and nothing makes it easier for a fan to identify with a team (and consequently, to endure a losing team) than a timeless, unchanging logo and a cathedral of a ballpark.

Which brings us back to the Angels. Never quite bad enough to be charming, never quite good enough to be tragic, the Angels occupy a sort of no-man's land in between. They just suck, basically. And aesthetically they're a mess. Never mind a logo—they haven't even been able to stick to a name, switching from Los Angeles Angels to California Angels to Anaheim Angels over the course of a few decades. How can anyone root for that?

But there was Chris Damore, the indefatigable figure in the circa '98 (Anaheim) Angels jersey and circa '65 (Los Angeles) Angels cap, hootin' and hollerin' like a freaking maniac while my brother and I watched the Dodgers' pitching staff crumble like so much feta cheese. Ugh. Darren Dreifort had absolutely nothing, Trever Miller—a lefty the Dodgers picked up from Philadelphia while I was gone last week—was a gas can, and Alan Mills wasn't much help either. A dreadful evening, capped off by the sight of Dodger general manager and gladhanding bastard Kevin Malone skulking back to his suite after the game while sucking on an ice cream cone. Recalling the words of Fugazi's Guy Picciotto: “Ice cream-eating motherfucker!”

FINAL SCORE: ANGELS 12, DODGERS 5

MEMORABLE HECKLE: Not a heckle either, but there was a great moment when, amid a hallucinatory swirl of fountain spray, just-spent fireworks smoke, multiple beach balls, Darin Erstad's stupid “Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee” song playing for the umpteenth time, and “the wave,” my brother deadpanned: “It's sensory overload. I'm freaking out.” Ah, Angel Stadium.

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