Long Beach’s new ball club touched by an Angel

Former World Series hero Percival finds his work in the Pioneer League ‘intriguing.’

- BILL SHAIKIN

TROY PERCIVAL will lead Long Beach's new independent minor league team in 2026, not far from Anaheim.

(WALLY SKALIJ Los Angeles Times)

When spring training rolls around, it will be one dozen years since the Angels last appeared in a postseason game and two dozen years since they won their first and only World Series championship. If baseball were scripted, two of the Angels’ World Series heroes would take charge of the team and make it a winner again.

As it turns out, two of those champions are taking charge of a team next year. Not the Angels, though.

Troy Percival has been hired to manage the new Long Beach team in the independent Pioneer League. Percival, the closer who recorded the final out in the 2002 World Series, said his hitting coach would be Troy Glaus, the 2002 World Series most valuable player.

“I made sure that he could hit fungoes,” Percival said, “because I can't.”

When we talked the other day, Percival wore a T-shirt with a cartoon image of a bull, with the word “PEN” stenciled on it. Once a reliever, always a reliever.

The Pioneer League extends into Idaho, Montana and Utah, and Percival managed the Idaho Falls team for the past two summers. He decided that was too many years too far from his Riverside home, and from his family.

He thought he would take a year off from coaching.