Those 2002 Angels, The Team I Like In Spite Of How Badly They Hurt Me

We've talked in this space before about the 2002 Anaheim Angels, a team that stomped mercilessly upon my heart and kept me from enjoying a San Francisco Giants World Series victory for the first time in my life. Nevertheless, they truly earned everything that had coming to them, and are one of those semi-legendary, moment-in-time teams that I'll always revere. They had quality up and down the lineup without any big marketable superstars; they have superstars now, a few of them, and they just can't seem to win for losing (!).

I wanted to try and collect a team set for these guys, and chose the 2002 Topps Chrome - even though it doesn't have David Eckstein nor Francisco Rodriguez, probably my favorite guys on the team. Ouch. K-Rod wasn't quite a thing yet, not until that postseason, and I'm honestly not sure why Eckstein didn't make it, seeing as he'd finished 4th in AL Rookie of the Year voting the year before. Weird. Anyway, it wasn't too hard to use a couple of online stores to cobble together this set. Here are a few of the heavy hitters from the team that year.