Salmon dinner
Tim Salmon has missed the entire season and spent much of the year away from the Angels as he recovered from knee and shoulder operations in Arizona.

Last week in Oakland, he found a nice way to feel part of the team again: He took a group of teammates out for a steak dinner in San Francisco.

“They said they hadn’t been out together this year,” said Salmon, who isn’t on the roster for the series against the Yankees. “When I’m playing, we’d do that every other road trip. The guys said, ’That was awesome.’ I said, ’Oh, you haven’t been doing that?’ The team dynamics are just different than in the past.”

Salmon, the team’s longest tenured player who raised the World Series championship flag on opening day in 2003 after the franchise’s first title, has watched from afar this year — and he saw Garret Anderson break three of his career records, for extra-base hits, total bases and RBIs.

The 37-year-old Salmon made his major league debut in 1992 and has spent his entire career with the Angels.

“The last couple years for them to be in the position they’ve been in winning wise, it’s been tough on me being injured,” said Salmon, the right fielder in 2002 who most recently has been designated hitter. “You want to be part of that. At the same time, it’s a family in here and I’m still part of it. You don’t have that emotional attachment, you haven’t spent that time grinding it out. It’s kind of like I’ve been the long lost relative, kind of been out of the country for a while.”

Seeing red
For years, Cardinals fans have dressed in red as a show of support for their team, giving Busch Stadium a high school football-like feel. Larry Walker jokingly suggested more of a Johnny Cash look after the Cardinals’ Game 1 victory over the Padres.

“If we could get the fans here to wear what they want while we’re batting and then when they come up to bat, if everyone would put on a black shirt, it would really help us out in the field,” Walker said. “The glare from the red and white people are wearing makes it hard to pick the ball up off the bat.”

MORE FROM BASEBALL

Baseball Section Front

A deal on Bradley? You're buying a lemon   CTB: Panda attacks conditioning like a jelly donut GMs head out to work on offseason trades Report: Mets, Phillies interested in Figgins MLB blog: Tigers listening to offers for Granderson Blyleven: Pitching to be had beyond Halladay   Celizic: MLB needs Cuban to breathe new life into game Jamie McCourt denies having affair Varitek exercises option to remain with Red Sox MLB blog: Mariners are bringing back Griffey ... why?   Baseball Section Front   Add Baseball headlines to your news reader: