3 Years, 0 Hits, Many Errors

You are in charge of the California Angels.

You are in charge of a team that just concluded its 1989 season with a record of 91-71, the third-best finish in franchise history.

You have, as assets, a .282-hitting first baseman, Wally Joyner; a Gold Glove center fielder, Devon White; a power-hitting left fielder, Chili Davis; a starting rotation that includes Chuck Finley, Kirk McCaskill and Mike Witt; a one-handed rookie pitching sensation, Jim Abbott, and a 25-save stopper in the bullpen, Bryan Harvey. All of these players are between 21 and 29 years old.

You enter the 1989 off-season needing hitting upon hitting. You try to sign free-agent center fielder Robin Yount and trade for slugging right fielder Joe Carter. Your offer, which the Cleveland Indians deem acceptable, is White and second baseman Johnny Ray for Carter. Yount re-signs with Milwaukee and you decide you can’t trade White without a center fielder to take his place. You make only one off-season acquisition of note--signing free-agent Mark Langston, a pitcher. Langston goes 10-17 in 1990.

You wait until your team is 7-10 and already five games out of first place before you trade for a leadoff hitter, unwanted New York Yankee Luis Polonia.

You wait until your team is 11-17 and 10 1/2 games out of first place before you trade for a home-run hitter, 38-year-old Dave Winfield.

You decline a trade offer of White and McCaskill for Boston center fielder Ellis Burks.

You demote White to Triple-A in early July, tanking his market value in the process.

You finish the 1990 season 80-82, 23 games back, and decide to hire Richard Brown as president/chief executive officer. Brown’s credentials: he is a “longtime Angels fan,” an Angels lawyer since 1981 and a former semipro softball player.

You finally trade White, and two other players, to Toronto. What you get are outfielder Junior Felix and second baseman Luis Sojo. You call Sojo “another Bobby Grich,” but by opening day, 1992, he’s in the minor leagues. Felix spends two years with the Angels, most of it in the trainer’s room, before being jettisoned in the 1992 expansion draft. White helps Toronto win the AL East in 1991 and the World Series in 1992.

You consider Davis, your top run-producer in 1988 and 1989, over the hill and allow him to sign as a free agent with the Minnesota Twins, who use Davis’ 29 home runs and 93 RBIs to win the 1991 World Series. You wait for Davis to turn 33 and his home-run production to slide to 12. Then you re-sign him.

You need a third baseman and you have a choice of two free agents, Terry Pendleton or Gary Gaetti. You consider Pendleton “too fat,” so you give a four-year, $11.4-million contract to Gaetti, who is 32 and has seen his home-run output slip, over the previous five seasons, from 34 to 31 to 28 to 19 to 16. Pendleton wins the 1991 National League MVP award. Gaetti bats .246 in 1991 and is on the bench by mid-1992.

You need a designated hitter, now that Davis is gone, so you trade 27-year-old outfielder Dante Bichette to Milwaukee for 40-year-old Dave Parker. Parker bats .232, strikes out 91 times and is waived in early September. Bichette hits 15 home runs in 1991 and bats .287 in 1992.

You fire Mike Port as general manager and replace him with Dan O’Brien. O’Brien’s credentials: general manager of the Texas Rangers, who have never won a pennant; president of the Seattle Mariners, who have had one .500 season, and assistant to the president of the Cleveland Indians, who last won a pennant in 1954.

You need another starting pitcher, so you sign out-of-work, out-of-shape Fernando Valenzuela. You start him at home, against Detroit, and the game draws 50,000. Valenzuela is shelled, gets another start, is shelled again, is out of work again.

You have a team still in contention, but fading, in the AL West in late July of ’91. You still need a starting pitcher, and Ron Darling is available, but the asking price is Lee Stevens or Kyle Abbott. You consider both players “untouchable.” Darling goes to Oakland. You end up trading Jack Howell for a reserve outfielder, Shawn (Li’l) Abner, and firing Doug Rader, the manager of the 91-71 Angels of 1989. Your team winds up 81-81, in last place, 14 games back.

You want to hire Whitey Herzog to head your baseball operation, but Herzog asks for the moon, the sun and permission to run a team based in Anaheim from his home in St. Louis. You give Herzog everything he wants. Between Mississippi fishing trips and Colorado ski vacations, Herzog trades both “untouchables” within a span of 13 months--Kyle Abbott to Philadelphia for Von Hayes, Stevens to Montreal for a Fresno State quarterback.

You would like to re-sign Winfield for less than his 1991 salary of $3 million, so you refuse to pick up the option on his contract, hoping to sign him at bargain-bin rates on the open market. Toronto beats you to it. Winfield goes on to hit .290 with 26 home runs and 108 RBIs and drives in the winning run in the final game of the 1992 World Series.

You allow Joyner, coming off a .301 season, and McCaskill, the dean of your pitching rotation, to sign elsewhere as free agents. You receive nothing in return. Suddenly lacking Winfield and Joyner, you find yourself in dire need of hitting, so you acquire Von Hayes, Alvin Davis and Hubie Brooks. You release Davis in June, Hayes in August and Brooks in October.

You finish the 1992 season 72-90, 24 games back, and you are asked to submit a 15-man protected list before the November expansion draft. Somehow, you come up with 15 names--and not one of them is “Bryan Harvey,” the best relief pitcher in the history of the franchise. You gamble that the Florida Marlins won’t bite, despite the fact that ex-Angels Rader, Cookie Rojas and Marcel Lachemann are members of the Marlin coaching staff. You lose.

You are unable to sign Jim Abbott to a multi-year contract, you are miffed about it, so you trade your most popular player--25, left-handed, hard-throwing, beloved in the community--to the Yankees. You get three minor leaguers in return.

You trade Lee Stevens for a quarterback.

You let Bert Blyleven slip away as a free agent to Minnesota and Herzog says, “I don’t know what happened.”

You trade Luis Sojo for Kelly Gruber and, a month later, you discover that Gruber has a torn rotator cuff that will cause him to miss anywhere from two to six months.

You are thinking about asking the American League president to rescind the Gruber trade, three weeks after you asked Montreal to rescind the Stevens trade.

You wonder why season-ticket sales are down.

You wonder what happened to that team you had 40 months ago.

You wonder why everyone is laughing.