Angels have memorable tribute to pitcher Tyler Skaggs
ANAHEIM >> Closure can be elusive. For the Angels, who lost teammate Tyler Skaggs a little less than two weeks ago, it will come slowly, haltingly, maybe uneasily, and probably at a different pace for each member of the organization.
But there are nights like Friday, the night before Skaggs would have turned 28, when in honoring their teammate the Angels delivered another of those evenings at the ballpark that you just don’t expect.
It was the first game after the All-star break, and their first home game since Skaggs was found dead in his hotel room two Mondays ago, before the subsequently postponed first game of a trip in Texas.
To commemorate? They scored seven runs in the first inning, 13 for the game, and pitchers Taylor Cole and Felix Peña combined on the franchise’s second combined no-hitter, a 13-0 victory over Seattle. Were there greater forces at work? “You can’t make this stuff up,” All-star center fielder Mike Trout said. “We scored seven runs in the first, ended with 13. Tyler’s birthday is 7-13. Thirteen runs, thirteen hits . ... Tonight was in honor of him. He was looking over us tonight, and he’s probably up there sayin’ we’re nasty.”
That phrase, of course, became Skaggs’ trademark. It apparently will be the Angels’ motto going forward.
It was a night packed with emotion, from the moments Angels players entered the ballpark — maybe walking past the impromptu shrine, with flowers and caps and signs and candles and baseballs, that fans set up outside the home plate gate — to the moments following the game when the uniformed personnel, all of whom wore “SKAGGS 45” jerseys, took them off and laid them on the pitcher’s mound.
The decision to wear the jerseys was made a week ago. Laying them on the mound was more spur of the moment, thought up by hitting coach Jeremy Reed and passed on to Justin Upton and then Trout and from there to the rest of the team.
The emotions remain raw. Skaggs’ locker in the Angels clubhouse remains intact, uniforms and sweat shirts, socks and shoes and his glove neatly placed. A sign saying, yes, “We’re Nasty” adorns the wall opposite the long row of cubicles.
Skaggs’ influence and memory will be felt in myriad other ways.
“I catch myself thinking about him all the time, honestly,” injured infielder Zack Cozart said. “It kind of haunts me because it’s just so sudden and tragic ... 45 will always be in my mind. To be honest, I think with all the guys here that’s how it’s gonna be.
“He’s the life of the team, honestly. He’s the music guy, he’s pumping everybody up. I went to Ole Miss, and him and (Andrew) Heaney used to have a thing with me where in a country voice they’d go ‘Hotty Toddy,’ because that’s the slogan at Ole Miss. When you’re around guys all the time, you have little things like that. Now every time I hear ‘Hotty Toddy,’ I’ll be thinking about Tyler.”
Note that Cozart referred to Skaggs in the present tense. That will happen for a while, too.
The pregame ceremony, with a tribute video and an emotional first pitch by his mom, Debbie, a former softball ace — yeah, you’d better believe she threw a perfect strike — was just a prelude.
Example: Trout touched off that seven-run first inning (and a 3 for 4, six-rbi night) with a two-run home run, a 454-foot rocket to dead center, on the first pitch from Mike Leake. He rarely swings at the first pitch.
“Like I said, he’s watching over everybody,” Trout said.
The night was cathartic. But even when the games aren’t as rousing as this one was, the night after night nature of baseball is therapeutic in its own way, normalcy through repetition.
“The fact that the game distracts them probably eased the pain a little bit,” Manager Brad Ausmus said. “We all went our separate ways at the All-star break; again, another distraction. We came back here, and I walked into the ballpark today and saw the flowers and the signs out front. That was kind of special.”
But true healing will take time, and probably a lot of it, depending on the individual. More than likely, that ache in the heart never really goes away, but over time you learn to manage it.
“I think it’s going to be tough this season” to truly get back to normal,” Trout said. “Obviously we’re going to remember him always. It just seems like everything we do at the stadium, he always comes up. You walk by his locker every day and you miss that fun. Every time you’d go up to him he had that smirk on his face, either in a sarcastic way, jokingly, or just trying to put a smile on your face.
“It’s going to be with us, for sure, obviously the rest of the time I play, but more the rest of the season because it’s here. We’re always going to be thinking about it, so it’s always going to be emotional. It doesn’t matter. It’s different for everybody, and it’s just something we’re going to have to get through.”
This wasn’t just a body blow for players and coaches. General manager Billy Eppler, who has his own priorities and responsibilities as the July 31 trade deadline approaches, noted that he’s found it hard to maintain focus.
“It’s not that easy of a plug-andplay,” he said. “I’ll find myself sometimes in mid-conversation and just kind of drift for a second or two, or 10 seconds, or whatever it is. I mean, this stuff hits people just randomly.”
But, he said, if there is a member of the organization who can help people get through this, it is their best player.
“I’m going to repeat a line that’s been said a little bit: His shoulders are broad because he carries around a lot,” Eppler said.
Being the team spokesman, in such trying circumstances, likely has been harder than anything Trout has ever had to deal with on a baseball field.
But he has shown us, again, that there are many ways to be an MVP.