Strange but true: Angels are flying around the bases.(Baseball)

I've seen some funny things happen at what used to be an alfalfa farm, an orange grove and a patch of eucalyptus trees. The real estate in question is now Angel Stadium, recently renamed when its corporate sponsor grew weary of supporting that mincing primate known as the Rally Monkey.

Before the Rally Monkey, there was a guy who called himself Angel Ape in the early 1980s. He came to every home game in a store-bought gorilla suit, with an aluminum foil halo wrapped around his head. He roamed the aisles and led the cheers, which at first was a fun diversion, they say ... but the guy never washed the costume. And he terrorized little kids. Not on purpose, but if you were 6, what would your reaction be if a large, smelly gorilla was running straight at you frantically waving a towel?

In recent years at this ballpark I've seen:

* A player trip over his own bat as he singled to left, falling face first a la Chevy Chase on Saturday Night Live.

* The same player, in the same game, hand the second out of an inning to a very surprised first-row fan. (I'm not about to name names. OK, it was Kevin Men&.)

* The actor who played Blue in the movie Old School hanging out in the dugouts and paraphrasing a line from the movie to tell Hank Blalock: "Get a hit, you @*%# pansy!"

But nothing prepared me for the sight of the Angels--managed by one of the slowest runners in the history of the game--racing around the bases as if they were late for important appointments. Mike Scioscia ...