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2002 Anaheim Angels

2002 Sports: The Rally Monkey & A Dispute In The Desert

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The two most dramatic events of the year that was 2002 sports came towards the end, with the World Series and college football’s national championship game, played that year in the Fiesta Bowl.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
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The Anaheim Angels won the Series after trailing a must-win Game 6 by five runs in the seventh inning. Aided by “The Rally Monkey”, the Angels won that game, won the next night and made amends to a fan base that had suffered through some tough collapses in the playoffs.
Miami was the defending national champion in college football and looked poised to repeat, entering the Fiesta Bowl against Ohio State as a solid favorite. The game proved to be an epic, going double overtime and the Buckeyes winning.
Hurricane fans feel forever jobbed over a controversial pass interference call at the end of the first overtime. Buckeye fans feel like there’s more to the story. But college football fans in a general sense, were the big winners, because this was not just one of the best games ever played, but the storylines remain rich to this day.
Another storyline coming out of the college football season as a whole was the re-emergence of USC. The Trojans had not won the Rose Bowl since 1996 and had not been the clear power of the Pac-10 since 1987-89. In their second year under Pete Carroll, USC lost a couple early games to good teams in Kansas State and Washington State, but then took off.
The Trojans moved their record to 8-2 and then closed on a tear. They beat crosstown rival, #25 UCLA, 52-21. USC then took on traditional rival, #7 Notre Dame and won 44-13. The Trojans finished the job in the Orange Bowl when they hammered third-ranked Iowa 38-17. Quarterback Carson Palmer won the Heisman Trophy and USC would be the dominant force in college football through 2008.
Read more about the 2002 World Series 
Read more about the Miami-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl
The Maryland Terrapins had knocked on the door of a national title in basketball in 2001 and in 2002 they broke it down. Veteran head coach Gary Williams produced an outstanding team, reached the Final Four in Atlanta and then squared off with Indiana, who was in the odd position of being a Cinderella.
After the firing of Bob Knight prior to the 2001 season, the Hoosiers somehow ended up in the Final Four a year later. It proved to be lightning in a bottle, for Knight-haters, it was a magical March, at least in the moment. Indiana gave Maryland a tough game in the NCAA final before the veteran Terps pulled away down the stretch.
Read more about the 2002 Final Four
The Detroit Red Wings already had veteran talent, and they went out and added more of it prior to the 2002 season, including one of the league’s best goalies in Dominic Hasek. The end result was the best record in the NHL and a Stanley Cup, though there were some interesting moments along the way to getting there.
Read more about the 2002 Detroit Red Wings
The Tampa Bay Buccaneers had a franchise reputation for ineptitude in the cold weather. But they also had an elite defense, and that proved to be enough to get them through a road trip to Philadelphia in January and ultimately a Super Bowl title.
Read more about the 2002 Tampa Bay Buccaneers
The Los Angeles Lakers had won the NBA title in 2000 and 2001 and behind great years from Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant, went 58-24 in the 2002 NBA season. They had a worthy challenger in the Sacramento Kings, who went 61-21.
By rights, this should have been Sacramento’s championship. The two teams played in the Western Conference Finals. The Kings led the series 3-2 and were in position to win Game 6. The officiating then took over and put the Lakers on the line 27 times in the fourth quarter, making it all but impossible for Sacramento to win.
Los Angeles won Game 7 on the road and then beat a completely overmatched New Jersey Nets team in four straight. Shaq averaged 36 points/12 rebounds against the Nets to win his third straight Finals MVP.
The Lakers were a very good team in 2002–good enough that asking Sacramento to, in effect, beat them five times in seven games is asking too much. Laker fans who can’t acknowledge the tainted quality of this three-peat should put down the Kool-Aid.
Read more about the 2002 Sacramento Kings 

The 2002 World Series: Wild All The Way To The End

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The 2002 World Series is marked in history by two things. Two wild-cards, the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants, faced off in the Fall Classic. This is the only instance of a wild-card showdown in either the World Series or the Super Bowl as of 2013. The other historical benchmark is more basic–the Angels and Giants turned in a classic seven-game showdown replete with heartbreak, a dramatic comeback and a rally cheer that proved prophetic.

GREAT 1980s SPORTS MOMENTS
Start reading today. 


Anaheim’s postseason history was marked with failure. They’d lost three consecutive close-out games in both the 1982 and 1986 American League Championship Series. The arrival of a new manager in Mike Scoscia gave the team a new attitude and focus.

The Angels were led by Garett Anderson, the outfielder who batted. 306, hit 29 home runs and had 123 RBIs. Troy Glaus was a more classic power hitter, who slugged 30 home runs. Veteran rightfielder Tim Salmon hit 22 dingers and had a .380 on-base percentage. An unknown designated hitter named Brad Fullmer had a .357 OBP and slugged .531.

Anaheim’s lineup was rounded out by a fundamentally sound shortstop in David Eckstein, a young catcher named Bengie Molina and a productive first baseman in Scott Spiezio. Their pitching was led by 18-game winner Jarrod Washburn, veteran Kevin Appier and closer Troy Percival. A big infusion of youth came from 23-year-old John Lackey, who started 18 games and finished 9-4 with a 3.66 ERA.

San Francisco’s lineup was much more top-heavy. Barry Bonds, juiced up on PEDs, came off his 73-home run season of 2001 with a 46-home run campaign that included a .370 batting average and an astonishing .799 slugging percentage. Opposing pitchers were so scared of Bonds that walked an even more amazing 198 times in 2002. Bonds won the MVP award, the second of what would be a run of four in a row.

Jeff Kent played second base and was an MVP himself, winning the award in 2000. This season, he hit 37 home runs and drove in 108 RBIs. The rest of the lineup was mostly role players, including veteran centerfielder Kenny Lofton and David Bell, the third baseman who hit 20 home runs.

The Giants’ pitching was balanced, with all five starters winning between 12-14 games, and two veterans in the bullpen with Tim Worrell as the setup man and Robb Nenn closing games out.

When the playoffs began, Anaheim showed they had a toughness previous Angel teams lacked. They lost the playoff opener to the New York Yankees, who had won four straight pennants. The Angels promptly won the next three to take the series. In the 2002 American League Championship Series they spotted the Minnesota Twins a game and followed it up with four straight wins and their first pennant.

San Francisco was pushed to the brink in the Division Series against Atlanta, before winning two straight games to advance. The Giants eliminated the St. Louis Cardinals in the 2002 National League Championship Series in five games, sweeping the middle three games at home and claiming their first pennant since 1962.

The 2002 World Series opened in Anaheim and it was a power display on both sides. Glaus homered twice, but Bonds, J.T. Snow and Reggie Sanders all went deep for San Francisco and the Giants won 4-3.

Game 2 was a wild affair. Anaheim scored five times in the first, but trailed 9-7 by the time they batted in the fifth inning. It was 9-9 in the eighth when Salmon got the last of his four hits, a two-run shot to give his team the lead. Bonds was walked three times and with two outs in the ninth he showed why–with the bases empty, they gave him a pitch to hit and disappeared for a home run. Anaheim was still able to hold on, 11-10.

Anaheim kept the offense rolling when the series went north for Game 3, with six players getting multiple hits in a 10-4 win. Once again, Bonds walked twice and homered when he had the chance.

The pitching settled down in Game 4 and the Angels led 3-0 after three. Then came the rally that looked like it might decisively alter the Series. San Francisco got three singles, Bond was walked and then another single to tie it 3-3. In the eighth, an Anaheim passed ball moved the winning run into scoring position and a Bell single won it for San Francisco. One night later it was the Giants’ offense that unloaded, winning 16-4 behind two home runs from Kent and three more hits from Bonds.

Game 6 is what this World Series is remembered for. It appeared that the only memory would be that of San Francisco cruising to a title, as the Giants led 5-0 going into the bottom of the seventh. The Anaheim crowd implored their team with the “Rally Monkey”, something based off a Jim Carrey movie and video clips inspired cheers throughout the stands. The Angels responded to the pleas of their home fans.

Spiezio hit a three-run homer in the seventh to give Anaheim some hope. In the eighth, facing Worrell, Erstad led off with a home run and suddenly it was a 5-4 game and there were still six outs to play with. Salmon and Anderson followed up with singles, and a crucial error by Bonds allowed Anderson to take second. Still no one out, Glaus ripped a double that gave Anaheim the lead and they closed an improbable 6-5 win.

It was the rookie, Lackey, who got the ball for the Angels and his opponent for San Francisco was Livan Hernandez, who knew a little something about being a rookie World Series hero–that’s what he’d been in the 1997 World Series when he won two games and Series MVP honors for the Florida Marlins.

The teams traded runs in the second, and then in the third Eckstein and Erstad singled, and Salmon was a hit by a pitch. Anderson delivered the decisive blow, a double down the right field line that cleared the bases. Trailing 4-1, San Francisco would get the tying run to the plate in the fourth, sixth and finally in the ninth, but no runs were forthcoming.

Anaheim was finally a World Series champion, and no one could say they hadn’t earned it. The Rally Monkey was now an indelible part of baseball lore.