White House is last stop on Angels' victory tour

ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) When Angels second baseman Adam Kennedy makes his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, one of the first things he'll do is search the hallways for portraits of another man named Kennedy.

Manager Mike Scioscia will make up for the trip he couldn't take in 1988 with the Los Angeles Dodgers. David Eckstein will look up an old pal President George Bush.

The last stop on the Angels' 2002 victory tour is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the defending World Series champions will forget about their mediocre record for a few hours before starting a 12-game road trip in Baltimore.

``It's Eck's second home, so he can show us around,'' Kennedy said with a grin.

Eckstein was at the White House in November along with Curt Schilling, Todd Helton, Charles Johnson and Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, all of whom were invited by syndicated columnist George Will for dinner with the president.

The Angels shortstop, accompanied by his mother, Patricia, chatted with Bush that evening about the team's first championship and about being a walk-on at the University of Florida. He even came away with an autographed golf ball.

``It's always an honor to go to the White House,'' Eckstein said. ``It's going to be another great experience. The first one was unbelievable.''

Also making his second trip will be right fielder Tim Salmon, the Angels' elder statesman. During the Clinton administration, Salmon, George Brett and Mike Timlin were invited to speak at a seminar for top major league prospects.

``It was right after the Monica Lewinsky thing broke,'' Salmon remembered. ``So of course, all the talk was like, 'Aw, he's not going to come and see us because there's so much going on.' But he actually did.

``He went around the room and made probably the best effort I've ever seen of trying to shake the hand of everyone in the room. And there were at least 100 of us.''

Asked to compare this upcoming White House trip to his appearance on Jay Leno's ``Tonight Show'' with several teammates the night after the World Series clincher, Salmon did not exactly give the politically correct response.

``I think both things are equally impressive. Both are icons of American culture,'' Salmon said. ``But, from the standpoint of my friends and family, I've got to believe that more of them tuned into the Leno show than will maybe see a news clip of us giving the president a jersey. So Jay Leno was a pretty big deal.''

Scioscia and hitting coach Mickey Hatcher, who played on the Dodgers 1988 world championship team, will go to the White House for the first time.

Scioscia missed his first chance during the Ronald Reagan administration because he had undergone knee surgery and wasn't able to get on an airplane. Hatcher was too ill to make the trip, which was only a couple weeks after he helped put away the Oakland A's with home runs in Games 1 and 5.

``It was disappointing, but at that time, the last thing I wanted to do was see a president,'' Hatcher recalled. ``I mean, I was burned out from playing and when I got home to Phoenix, I just wanted to hide away from everything for a couple of weeks. That's how much the season took out of me.''

Injured center fielder Darin Erstad, the punter on Nebraska's 1994 national championship team, didn't get to accompany more than 80 Cornhuskers teammates to the White House on March 13, 1995. He was playing for the Angels rookie league team in Mesa, Ariz., at the time.

``I was trying to get to the big leagues, so I wasn't too concerned about all that stuff. But everything's worked out OK,'' Erstad said. ``I'm just going to enjoy the moment and take it all in.''

(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)