Waiting Game : Aldrete Has Adjusted to His Role as Utility Player

ANAHEIM — Mike Aldrete quit daydreaming a long time ago. Cooperstown isn’t keeping a spot open for him. Nike isn’t going to put him in a commercial. He won’t make $1 million this year.

These days Aldrete embraces reality and perspective. Wishful thinking isn’t worth his time or effort.

Aldrete is 35, closer to the end of a career marked by frequent address changes than to its beginning. But he has a gig this season, a locker stall in the clubhouse and a seat in the dugout.

He’s just happy to be playing for the Angels.

Playing? Sitting is probably a more accurate description of his routine. A little batting practice, some fielding drills, then more nights than not it’s into the dugout come game time.

There’s no time to nod off. Any minute, particularly with runners on base and the game on the line in the late innings, Manager Marcel Lachemann might call on him to pinch hit.

One at-bat tonight then perhaps it’s a week before Aldrete gets a shot to play again. His title is “utility player.” Aldrete is better than most, which is why he’s stuck around as long as he has.

“I hate to label any skill I have as being special,” said Aldrete, making $200,000 this season after signing a minor-league contract with the Angels last Dec. 7. “It’s just that I’ve been able to deal with failure. . . . I deal with failure so well because I’ve had so much of it.”

Never a star but always valuable, Aldrete is a career .266 hitter. For the Angels, he’s expected to pinch-hit, to fill in occasionally at first base and in the outfield.

He harbors no illusions about pushing aside first baseman J.T. Snow or outfielders Garret Anderson, Jim Edmonds or Tim Salmon.

“Sometimes it’s to the point that it amazes me that I’m even in the same game,” Aldrete said. “With some of the guys on this team, some days I wonder if I’m even on the same planet.”

For the most part, Aldrete has been a gun for hire. You know, “Have bat, will travel.”

“His swing is so natural,” said Rex Hudler, another Angel utility player and a former teammate in Montreal. “He’s like Roy Hobbs. He’s got great hands.”

It’s not an easy life at the end of the bench. Or a predictable one. Friends come and go. You’re never settled in one place too long.

Aldrete’s career began with the San Francisco Giants, which was thrilling enough because he grew up in Monterey and graduated from Stanford.

“He was basically the same hitter he is now,” said Angel designated hitter Chili Davis, a former Giant teammate. “He filled in and did a good job. He played a lot more with San Francisco and I ended up taking the short end of the stick.”

The switch-hitting Davis, an outfielder then, played against left-handed pitchers. Aldrete, a left-handed hitter, played against right-handers.

After three seasons with the Giants, Aldrete was sent to Montreal in 1988. The Expos released him and the San Diego Padres signed him and then released him--all in 1991. Next stop Cleveland. The Indians released him after he spent ’92 at triple-A Colorado Springs.

Oakland was his next club, but midway through last season the Athletics traded Aldrete to the Angels for minor league outfielder Demond Smith.

It was no cinch Aldrete would make the Angels this year, but after a rocky spring he was one of the 25 names on the opening-day roster.

“Starters think their job is hard,” Davis said. “Role players think their job is hard. The thing we forget is that we have a job. Not having a job is hard.”

Aldrete knows this well and he’s not about to complain about a lack of playing time.

“I haven’t been a griper or a moaner,” he said. “That’s especially easy on this team. Where am I going to play? First base? Outfield? No, you just sit right there.”

That’s not to say Aldrete never contributes, that he has a free ride with the best seat in the house.

He has been a key player off the bench this year, batting .200 with three home runs and eight runs batted in.

“We didn’t have enough depth to the point where we were comfortable last year,” General Manager Bill Bavasi said. “Lach had to ride the mules [play the starters] the whole way. [Aldrete] is a pretty good hitter who knows how to fill a role. He knows how to come off the bench.”

Given the chance April 15, Aldrete also proved he has a pretty fair starter with a career game against Seattle at the Kingdome. Filling in for Davis as DH, Aldrete doubled, hit his first career grand slam and had five RBIs.

“That’s better than some years I’ve had,” he said, joking.

Said Hudler: “I think it shocked him to a certain extent.”

Davis dispatched a clubhouse attendant to fetch a bottle of champagne for Aldrete as the Angels rolled to a 9-1 lead by the fourth inning.

But the Angels collapsed in the late innings, losing, 11-10. The champagne stayed corked and the celebration never took place. Aldrete smiled and shrugged after telling the story. It was the thought that counted.

“A lot of people have given me ‘What ifs,’ ” Aldrete said. “I like to stay away from that. The last thing I want to have are any regrets about the game. It would just be a shame to have bad feelings.

“One guy came up to me after that night and said, ‘It must look like a beach ball to you.’ No. Every once in a while the baseball gods smile on you. Everything kind of came together for me.”