THE BELL CURVE:

I had a couple of short nights this week. I always like it when the Angels are playing in the East because it reaches here in late afternoon and I can enjoy the game with my evening martini and get to bed at a decent hour.

Admittedly, dinner is sometimes delayed a bit (there are hard and fast rules about no television during dinner in this house) but that seems a small price to pay when watching the Angels beat up on any of the eastern teams. Especially the Boston Red Sox.

So even though the Angels had lost the first two playoff games to Boston, I was convinced they would buck the odds and turn it around (I have a brick my wife and daughters bought for me at Angel Stadium that says “ever hopeful”).

I felt that way when the Sunday game started at 5 p.m. and still felt that way five hours and 2.5 martinis later when the Angels scratched out a run in the 12th inning and made it stand up in spite of some horrendous fielding.

So Monday night with John Lackey pitching, I was sure they would come back to the Rally Monkey in Anaheim for the final game, even when the Angels were down 2-0 in the eighth inning. And they did.

They tied the score and put the winning run on third base with one out in the ninth, then botched a highly dubious suicide squeeze — and started their winter vacation early.

They looked bad overall in this series — fielding and base running atrociously and leaving clusters of men on base in virtually every inning. But some outstanding pitching certainly made it interesting.

The Angels rented Mark Teixeira to beat Boston and win a World Series. It didn’t work out that way so he will probably carry his bat to a higher rent district next year and the Angels will be looking for another franchise player. And we will read about it over the winter and debate it and await spring training impatiently while the country — and quite likely the world — self destructs.

So you say that sweating out a baseball team under such circumstances is an inexcusable glorification of piffle? Not at all. It’s a rock of sanity in a world gone mad. The distance from the pitcher’s mound to home plate hasn’t changed in 150 years. You can depend on it. How many other things can you say that about today?

I once wrote an essay called “The Ultimate Therapy” whose thesis was the importance of investing real caring and attention in people, places and games of absolutely no importance in the great scheme of things.

Believe me, it’s a lot easier — still tough but easier — to be sipping a martini and watching a ballgame while trying to deal with the possibility of bread lines in Newport Beach.

So I’ll watch the rest of the baseball season, even though my team is out. I’ve been fascinated all year with the Tampa Bay Rays, who came from last to first place in the space of a year, thereby proving a passel of baseball cliches by which some of us live.

You know, “The game isn’t over ‘til the last man is out” and “We’ll have a clean slate to write on next year” and “Good guys don’t always finish last” and similar bits of wisdom. Meanwhile, I trust that Angel manager Mike Scioscia will have ample time to think over his decision to call for a high-risk suicide squeeze in such a critical situation. So go Rays!

I dropped in at the county fairgrounds in Del Mar the week before last to check out the fuss over building a 16-mile toll road that would connect Rancho Santa Margarita to north San Diego County through one of California’s busiest and most eclectic state parks.

When approval for the road was sought by the Orange County Transportation Authority from the California Coastal Commission, it set off a wild demonstration last February that ended with the request being turned down.

That, in turn, led to an appeal by toll road supporters to the U.S. Department of Commerce which can override the commission’s ruling.

So it was déjà vu all over again at the Del Mar Fairgrounds where an estimated 6,000 people showed up to convince the federal delegation running the show that the rejection should be allowed to stand.

It wasn’t difficult to separate the two factions that gathered outside and around the huge, hot hall where the hearing was.

The earnest proponents of the road were in matching Transportation Corridor Agency T-shirts, offering slick literature and eager to explain their position.

And raucous surfers and devoted users of San Onofre State Beach — some carrying small children — supported their cause with disorganized enthusiasm in multiple booths that included a life-size cardboard cutout of George Bush wearing a shirt opposing the toll road and offering visitors a photo op that I couldn’t resist.

If the Fed’s decision is based on creativity, the toll road is history. The opponents outside were a lot more fun than listening to the 650 people who registered to speak at the hearing.

I found a half-dozen from Newport-Mesa on the list before I gave up the search, which droned through an inadequate PA system into the early evening. Now the fate of the toll road is in the hands of Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, who has until Jan. 7 to weigh its benefits to the nation.

Seeking a moral to all this uproar, I would suggest two. First, we can seldom predict what issues — sometimes the most unexpected — may ignite the enormous response this one did. And, second, the good old American standby of public demonstrations is alive and active and remains a tool for the underpowered to take on the authorities.

A local example comes to mind. When popular Estancia High School teacher Bob Sterling disappeared from his classroom one recent day, his angry students were given no proper explanation.

So they took their cause to the streets, not violently but persuasively. As a result, while explanations await, their teacher is back in his classroom and a lot of Estancia students have been taught a lesson in how democracy can work.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.