Sports

Angels’ assistant general manager experiences thrill of World Series
By Kip Carlson

Forsch at Edison International Field, spring 2003

During a 16-year career with the Houston Astros and California Angels, Ken Forsch pitched in two All-Star Games and a National League Championship Series. The right-hander threw a no-hitter, won over 100 games and saved over 50 more in the Major Leagues.

Yet none of those thrills was quite the same as the one that Forsch — who pitched for Oregon State in 1967-68 — got last year by just sitting and watching. It came when his Anaheim Angels concluded their unlikely run from wild-card longshots to world champions by wrapping up the 2003 World Series against the San Francisco Giants.

"There’s nothing like it — it was just magical last year," said Forsch, who is now in his sixth year as the Angels’ assistant general manager. "To watch it was just like, ‘What’s going on? Why is this happening?’ We’d be down three or four runs in the seventh inning and — BOOM — make it up and be winning. It was incredible … whatever was happening, you couldn’t stop it."

Forsch, who also ran the Angels’ minor league system for five years in the 1990s, had a hand in setting up that championship. His duties now include keeping the team on course to meet its budget; maintaining a database of players in all 30 Major League teams’ systems, their contract status and the Angels’ scouting reports on them; and evaluating the top amateur prospects around the country.

"What I like about the job is, each different part of the season it changes," he said this spring in his office at Edison International Field. "There’s always something different to do."

The job has a lot to like, but the highlight is the same as it was when Forsch played.

"The favorite part is winning," Forsch said. "If you don’t win, it doesn’t make any difference.

"I think the most fun I’ve ever had, though, was sign a kid, put him in the minor leagues, watch him do the different stages, then come up here and be successful."

Forsch’s path toward the front office began in 1986 when he was playing for the Angels. He wasn’t around, though, for their American League West championship and heartbreaking playoff loss to the Boston Red Sox that season.

"I was 39 years old, and we were playing the Yankees," Forsch said. "I came in in relief and Don Mattingly was up. Even after all the success I’d had, I knew there was nothing I could throw in the strike zone and get him out. I told (manager Gene) Mauch after the game that it was time to get on with doing something else."

Forsch’s agent advised him to take a year off and decide what he might want to do next.

"That lasted about a month, and I was champing at the bit," he said.
Forsch had entered the business world by working offseasons with a bank in Houston; after retiring as a player he built a career in real estate.

Six years after he quit playing, though, he started feeling the itch to get back into baseball. His brother, Bob, had pitched for Whitey Herzog with the St. Louis Cardinals; Herzog had become one of the Angels’ co-general managers and Forsch gave him a call.

That was on a Monday. Co-general manager Dan O’Brien was fired later that week, Herzog needed someone to run the Angels’ minor league system, and on the next Monday Forsch was on a plane to Arizona for the meeting of baseball’s "farm directors."

One week from making a phone call to running a farm system isn’t exactly the norm.

"It was crazy, yeah," Forsch said. "Fortunately, I had the business experience with the real estate and my own company, and they were looking for somebody to handle that part of it — the budgets and make sure there are bats and balls for all the farm clubs and whatever."

Those business skills have been important since Forsch’s shift to assistant general manager. Another insight he picked up as a player has also stood him in good stead.

"Understanding of what a player is going through," Forsch said. "Because when you’re sitting up there, everything looks easy and you think, ‘Aw, that guy — why didn’t he catch that ball? How can he make that pitch?’ Well, I know how you can do it, because I’ve been down there and I’ve done it. It’s just one of those things.

"You’re going to win some and you’re going to lose some; the idea is just to give it every effort that you can and that’s what we’re looking for — that every effort is given, that the coaches make sure they give the proper instruction. If you get all those things together, it kind of takes care of itself."

Just like it did in 2002.