Party's Just Getting Started

Reggie Willits belts a majestic fly ball toward the leftfield foul pole in Baltimore's Camden Yards, a typical blast during batting practice, when coaches groove 55-mph meatballs and players jovially pump balls out of the yard to massage their egos and amuse their teammates. But leaning on the back of the batting cage, Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia is not amused.

"Hey!" he yells at his 26-year-old rookie outfielder. "What was that? That's going to cost you."

Willits hangs his head, chagrined at having been busted. He's a speedy, switch-hitting leadoff man who made it to the majors last season three years after being drafted in the seventh round--and two years after he whiffed 112 times in A�ball--because he shortened his stroke, developed patience at the plate and became a pest. Willits has not hit a home run in his first 276 big league at bats, but he is a perfect little Angel because at the All-Star break he led all rookies in on-base percentage (.408), walks (40) and stolen bases (18, in 22 attempts).

Scioscia is so insistent that Willits not swing for the fences that he instituted a rule: For every home run he hits in batting practice he must run a lap around the ballpark. When Willits lofted a ball over the wall at Yankee Stadium in May, he complained to Scioscia that the short porch in rightfield was to blame. The appeal was rejected. Willits ran his lap. This time, in Baltimore, Scioscia commuted the sentence because Willits's drive had curved foul.

"I've had to run a bunch of laps," Willits says, "but not that many [lately]. Line drives and ground balls. That's what I need to be working on."

Slugging outfielder and perennial MVP candidate Vladimir Guerrero is the Angels' franchise player, but Willits is the freshest symbol of how, under the discipline of Scioscia and the direction of owner Arte Moreno, the Angels are becoming baseball's model franchise. With their deep pockets, robust farm system, blossoming major league talent and organization-wide culture of unselfishness, they have what it takes to contend for years, perhaps even to dominate in a way that no club has since the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees in the 1990s. Willits is just one of many promising L.A. regulars to advance through a development system inspired by Scioscia's principles of aggressive baserunning, smart situational hitting and strong defense--elements of team play known as the Angel Way.

"Coming up through the minor leagues, everything is charted," Willits says. "How many times you go from first to third base, every time you break up a double play, every sac bunt and every hit-and-run you're given. . . . This is what the Angels do. It's easy for people to buy into it because you see the results."

A manager who makes big leaguers run laps? An owner who cuts beer prices and who routinely checks the cleanliness of the Angels Stadium bathrooms, each staffed by an attendant? Players hell-bent on flying from first to third instead of relying on the three-run homer? (Good thing, too: At week's end the Angels had been waiting 540 at bats since their last three-run dinger.) And a team that wins, turns a nice profit, plays in perfect weather and pays top dollar, with Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez widely rumored to be the next free agent to come under its spell? No wonder Moreno, sipping a beer and munching peanuts from a third base field box, could smile even as his club was losing 14-9 last Friday at Yankee Stadium.

"In baseball terms we're just getting this toward second base," says Moreno, 60, who in May 2003 purchased the franchise for $184 million--or $476 million less than the Boston Red Sox had gone for only a year earlier--and immediately began operating it as a big-market club spending big-market money. (According to Forbes, the Angels are now worth $431 million.) "This is just the start of the process."

For reasons ranging from increased revenue sharing and a crackdown on performance-enhancing drugs, the game has changed in this century. Few teams have played it better in the season's first half than the slash-and-dash Angels. Los Angeles reached the All-Star break in first place in the AL West at 53-35 (the best record in franchise history after 88�games), and the team's profile bodes well for the second half.

With solid starting pitching (the 42�wins from L.A.'s rotation are second only to the Red Sox') and a balanced, creative offense reminiscent of National League baseball, the Angels can not only stay out of prolonged slumps but also marshal the preferred weaponry for postseason play. And stocked with players in or entering their prime--shortstop Orlando Cabrera and centerfielder Gary Matthews Jr. are the oldest every-day players, at 32--the Angels have the look of recent champions. Only four regular players (DHs excluded) among the past five title winners were 33 or older halfway through the season: Tim Salmon, 33, of the 2002 Angels; Bill Mueller, 33, of the '04 Red Sox; and Jim Edmonds, 36, and So Taguchi, 37, of the '06 Cardinals.

"The one commodity they have that everybody wants is pitching," says an American League G.M. "But what they also have now is an owner who wants to win. I mean, really wants to win. All owners would like to win, but at the end of the day there are only about four franchises where the driving force is an owner who, from the minute he wakes up, is all about whether he wins or loses that day. I would put the Yankees, Boston, Detroit and the Angels in that class."