The Angel

Anybody with three nicknames like "Jim," "Red" and "Mac" figures to be pretty square. But freckle-faced James McGlothlin, star pitcher for the American League's California Angels, considers himself pretty far-out. "I smoke," he says. "And I drink--at family gatherings. Once I went to a nightclub. And once I had one too many, and my family sent me to bed."

While Jim McGlothlin looks and talks like a boy, he pitches like a pro. Playing for a team that as late as June 8 was in last place, eleven games off the pace, Jim has won eight games and lost only two. His earned-run average is 1.80 --best of any starting pitcher in the American League--and he leads the league in shutouts with five. Last week the Angels were in fifth place, only six games behind the Chicago White Sox, and Manager Bill Rigney was hollering at his players in the locker room: "Let's win the pennant." Jim McGlothlin was packing his glove and spikes. He had to pitch in the All-Star game.

McGlothlin's 1967 showing qualifies as a comeback--although he is only 23. When he was 18, Jim tried out with the Los Angeles Dodgers, struck out twelve of the 13 men he faced--and never heard from the Dodgers again. The Angels finally signed him for $5,000 (which he blew on a new car), and he trotted off to Illinois-Iowa's Quad-Cities Angels in the Class A Midwest League, where he won 13 games, lost five and posted an ERA of 2.79. After that, it was all downhill. Twice, the Angels called him up; his record for those two stints in the big leagues shows 14 starts and one finish (which he lost 2-0), three victories and four defeats, and a dreadful ERA of 4.29.

McGlothlin's latest turnabout began last year when he was farmed back down to Seattle, where he caught the eye of Bob Lemon, onetime star pitcher for the Cleveland Indians. Jim went to Seattle with an overhand fastball, a nickel curve, and simplistic notions about strategy: if the bases were loaded and the count was 3 and 2, he threw the next pitch low and away. At least nobody ever hit him in a spot like that. Lemon taught him how to throw a sidearm fastball, a slider and a change of pace, and he also taught McGlothlin something about major-league hitters: "They're human, like everybody else."

Indeed they are. Last week he breezed past the Kansas City Athletics 7-2, then celebrated by taking his wife Janice, to whom he has been married since he was 19, out on the town. They each had one drink.

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