ARLINGTON – As Kole Calhoun drove a home run into the Rangers bullpen on Tuesday night, he rounded first base and pointed to the heavens, assured in his belief the Los Angeles Angels had a new advocate watching over.
“It just kind of felt right,” Calhoun said after the Angels’ 9-4 victory, the team’s first game since the death of teammate Tyler Skaggs on Monday. “When I got to the plate, it just felt right. We know we’ve got someone watching over us now.”
The devastated Angels decided to get back on the field Tuesday, in a sense, a requiem for one of the boys of summer.
The Angels desperately needed to play, the game acting as a shelter from the overwhelming sense of grief they have felt in the aftermath of the death of Skaggs, who was found unresponsive in his hotel room in Southlake the day before.
“The first day back, whether it was going to be today or tomorrow, was going to be one of the toughest, other than yesterday,” said manager Brad Ausmus. “The game itself can be a refuge for players, where they can turn their minds off and just focus on baseball. I don’t know that sitting in a hotel room would do them any … .”
Good was what he was trying to say. He couldn’t do it before breaking down in tears. Team president John Carpino sat at the dais during the pregame news conference at Globe Life Park, his swollen, red eyes evidence of heartbreak.
The moment was a cruel reminder of the reality that life goes on no matter the depth of one’s sorrow.
Owner Arte Moreno and general manager Brad Eppler joined them.
“I can’t explain it, man,” Mike Trout said after the game. “Lost a teammate, lost a friend, lost a brother. We just got to get through it. Skaggs was an unbelievable person.
“He wouldn’t want us to take another day off.”
When Lou Gehrig was robbed of old age at not quite 38 in 1941, the presider at his funeral said simply that there would be no eulogy.
The reason: “You all knew him.”
In delivering remarks and answering questions from media, the Angels eulogized their free-spirited 27-year-old left-hander with the magnetic personality, typical of an upbringing in the ocean climes of his Santa Monica hometown in California.
Inside and outside the clubhouse, “so many people looked at Tyler as a brother or a son, even though they might not have had a family relationship with him,” Eppler said, his voice, too, cracking with emotion.
“We lost a member of our family yesterday,” Eppler continued. “Tyler Skaggs was a teammate, a brother, friend and most important of all, he was a husband and a son.
“Tyler brought joy to everyone around him. People were drawn to him, he was generous and kind, and our team will never be the same without him. But forever we’ve been made better by him.”
Somber Angels players attended the pregame news conference to add support, though team officials did not make them available.
Understandably, they just weren’t ready, at that time. Most of the team gathered for media after the game in the Rangers media interview room. The Angels clubhouse remained closed.
“Grief is personal to all of us,” Eppler said. “It doesn’t have a timeline, it doesn’t have a roadmap, but what is most important is we will all be here for each other.”
Needless to say, nothing was the same about the game.
The game presentation didn’t include anything we’ve become accustomed to in the modern day, toned down by the Rangers out of respect for their American League West rival.
A moment of silence was held prior to the national anthem. At their allotted time before the 7:07 first pitch, the Rangers simply ran out to the field without public address announcer Chuck Morgan’s formal proclamation. There was no walkup music for Texas hitters, something Shin-Soo Choo initially suggested, and teammates endorsed. In fact, for music between innings there was only soft organ melodies.
The iconic Dot Race took the night off. So did the Cotton Eye Joe. For the stretch half of the seventh inning, a very understated Take Me Out to the Ballgame was the selection.
“I can’t imagine” what the Angels are going through, Texas manager Chris Woodward said. “It breaks your heart to think about it.”
Grounds crew members painted Skaggs’ No. 45 on the back of the pitcher’s mound.
In the Angels dugout hung Skaggs’ jersey, brought out of the clubhouse extemporaneously by pitcher Andrew Heaney.
It will be different for a couple of more days for the Rangers, who have games scheduled through Thursday with Los Angeles.
For the Angels, life has been changed forever.
“We wanted to take him out there with us one more time,” Heaney said before breaking down. “He was my best friend. There are probably about a hundred other people who would say that he was their best friend, too, because he treated everybody like that.”