Yesterday's stars: Angione remembers the journey
By GEORGE?ALBANO Hour staff writer
(Norwalk, CT 9-27-2011) Mike Angione has never been one of those former athletes who sits around years later and asks himself "What if?"
Even though he probably has every right to.
But instead the 58-year-old Norwalk native and lifelong resident prefers to remember his entire body of work when he was maybe the best pitcher of his era in this city.
He would much rather recall his days on the mound in the local PONY and Colt leagues, and when he pitched in high school and for the Norwalk American Legion. He enjoys looking back more on a time when he was one of the top college pitchers in the Northeast and caught the attention of several big league clubs.
Yes, Angione prefers to remember all that than just focus on the unfortunate shoulder injury he suffered while pitching in the minors that ended his dream of reaching the major leagues, a destination many people -- including the Minnesota Twins, the team that drafted him -- believed he was headed for soon.
So who could blame Angione if once in a while he asked himself "What if?"
But he doesn't. Not with a resume full of memorable moments dating all the way back to the early 1960s and his days as an all-star pitcher in the Cranbury AA, not long after the league started.
But it was in the PONY League where the lefty-throwing Angione really began to establish himself, never more so than one afternoon when the Norwalk PONY League 13-14 year-old all-stars played the Brien McMahon Babe Ruth 13-15 all-stars. Angione was not only the winning pitcher, but struck out 22 batters.
Twenty-two batters? In a seven-inning game?
"What happened was I had a no-hitter going into the seventh and I struck out the first two guys," Angione explained. "I walked a few guys so I didn't have a perfect game, but I had a no-hitter and every out was a strikeout.
"I struck out the third guy up in the seventh, too, but it was on a curve ball and Doug Peoples was my catcher and couldn't handle it. So he had to throw to first base for the putout, but he threw it into right field. Then the next guy up hits a home run. I lost the no-hitter and the shutout. I said thanks Doug.
"I struck out the next guy and we won, but to this day every time I see Dougie I give him a hard time."
It was shortly after that Angione enrolled at Cherry Lawn, a private school in Darien, where he pitched four years from 1967-70.
"I wanted to go to Norwalk High, but my parents wanted me to go to St. Luke's," he said. "St. Luke's was full, so they sent me to Cherry Lawn.
And Angione is the first to admit that the competition was not very good. With a fastball that was clocked in the mid-90s, most teams were overmatched against him.
"I pitched something like 11 no-hitters," Angione, who threw four of them as a senior, said. "I had a couple of perfect games, too. I forgot how many strikeouts I had, but it was over 400 in four years.
"I was hoping my last couple of years I could pitch at Norwalk High. I think I would've had a little more accolades. But my parents wanted me to stay where I was."
He even admits to taking a little good-natured ribbing from friends and other baseball people about the competition he was mowing down.
"I remember one game Danny Letizia (a well-known longtime local coach) was coaching third base for the other team and I was on the mound and he yelled to me 'Cherry Lawn. Is that a girls league?'
"Well, that just made me throw harder and I had 18 or 19 strikeouts that game. After the game Danny congratulated me and said 'I guess it's not a girls league after all.' "
But if Angione needed further validation of how good he was he got it when he pitched a no-hitter for the Norwalk Legion team against New Canaan and led the team with a 1.10 ERA.
"I was getting 16, 17 strikeouts a game in Colt League and about 13, 14 a game in American Legion," Angione, who was 6-feet, 195 pounds in his prime, noted. "So I think I would've done okay in the FCIAC.
"Artie DeFillippis (an All-FCIAC pitcher at Stamford Catholic in 1970) and I became good friends over the years," he added. "He's a year older than me and always said it's too bad I didn't go to Norwalk because he and I would've locked up in some good pitching duels."
The Yankees even invited him to a tryout when he was only 16.
"It was at the old Yankee Stadium," Angione said. "Not the Yankee Stadium before this one. The one before old one."
Angione also threw no-hitters in the City Rec League for Shorehaven Dodge and in the Stamford Twilight League.
And if there were still any doubters, Angione made believers out of them when he went to Iona College in New Rochelle and no-hit St. John's in the fall his freshman year. His 2.43 career ERA is still among the Gaels' all-time best.
He could also hit, batting .364 one season and .340 for his three-year career.
"I remember one game I had four hits: two triples, a single and a double," he said. "And I didn't get any RBIs."
But pitching was Angione's forte and following his junior season -- a season that saw him strike out 70 batters in 50 innings -- the Twins drafted him in the 12th round in 1974.
"Back then, for someone to be drafted from New England was very rare," Angione noted. "Everybody else was from either California or down south."
It was Herb Stein, the same scout who signed hall of famer Rod Carew and pitcher Frank Viola out of St. John's, who recommended Angione to the Twins. The two remained in contact over the years until Stein passed away last December at age 93.
Angione pitched for the Wisconsin Rapids of the Class A Midwest League in '74 and was slated to move up to Double A Orlando in the Florida Instructional League the following season. The Twins' brass was high on him and saw him as part of their future.
In fact, that spring, future hall of fame pitcher Bert Blyleven, who was already with the parent club, was clocked at 92 mph. Angione had reached 96.
But during spring training, he tore a tendon in his left shoulder, an injury that would essentially end his career.
"Ligaments and muscles can be repaired," he said. "But when you rip a tendon, it's hard to come back. At least back then it was. They wouldn't even give me a percentage of a chance they thought I might come back."
Instead the Twins gave Angione his release. But at 23, he wasn't ready to give up on baseball -- or himself -- yet.
"I tried to come back," he said. "The Yankees and Phillie gave me a look in '78 and the Blue Jays in '79. But nothing came of it."
He even threw batting practice for the Mets before games at Shea Stadium for a short while.
"I was hoping it might get me hooked up. But once the word got out, 'Oh, the lefty from the Twins who blew his arm out,' nobody wanted to take a chance on you."
Angione never had surgery and eventually the muscle around the tendon built his shoulder back up to the point where he could throw again.
"When I was 27 or 28, I still had pretty good stuff. I could break 94 or 95 (mph)," he said. "But it hurt, believe me. One day I felt great, but then I couldn't brush my teeth for a week."
Angione continued to pitch into his 30s and 40s, hurling for the Norwalk Pirates and then the Stamford A's (with DeFillippis) in an over-30 men's baseball league.
"I hit 93 once with the Stamford A's and someone said the gun must be broken," he laughed. "And in 1998, I pitched in an alumni game at Iona and hit 89 on the gun."
A year later, at the age of 46, Mike Angione decided he was finally done pitching. But he stayed close to baseball by coaching an AAU team in Fairfield and tutoring local players in Norwalk at Grand Slam and in Fairfield at The Cage.
And in 2001, a part of Mike Angione actually made it to the World Series. He applied for and was granted a patent for what he called the "Ang Pad."
"It's like a Dr. Shoals inner glove that goes inside a baseball glove and helps protect the hand from the shock of the ball. It's mostly for catchers," he explained. "You slide it into the glove and put your hand on top of it. Some catchers use sponges, but this works better."
Back in 2001, Angione sent a bunch of them to Joe Garagiola Jr., who he knew from his baseball days. Garagiola, now a senior vice president with MLB, was general manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks then and his catcher, Damian Miller, tried it and liked it.
And in the 2001 World Series between the Yankees and D'backs, Angione's "Ang Pad" made it to baseball's biggest stage, even if you couldn't see it.
"I sold maybe 2,000 or 3,000 of them," Angione, now a material analyst with Sikorsky Aircraft in Shelton, said. "A few other players in the majors used them, but the company I partnered with went bankrupt. We didn't have the money to market them.
"But I have the patent for 20 years, so 10 years is up and I still have 10 years to go."
Mike Angione's love for baseball, however, will never run out. No, it will always be a part of him.
He even has a baseball card of himself from his Twins days that he usually carries with him.
Not so he could ask himself, "What if," but rather to remind himself of what was a memorable and successful baseball journey.