Just before the single greatest moment in the history of the Angels baseball franchise, Ken Higdon had work to do.
Higdon, the Angels’ clubhouse manager from 1994-2009, rolled a bin full of champagne bottles into the Angels locker room during Game 7 on the night they won the 2002 World Series. Before the final out, Higdon and clubhouse assistant Eric Blum were alone with the champagne, two longtime clubbies, doing what clubbies do, getting the show ready for somebody else.
“We are going to win the World Series,” Higdon said to Blum, years of laundry, cleat buffing and cleaning up after dusty ballplayers tucked into those words. Blum told the story this week as he reminisced about his friend.
But there was a slight problem with the champagne bottles.
A night earlier it had looked very much as if the Angels opponents, the San Francisco Giants, were going to win. They held a 5-0 lead in the 7th inning of Game 6. And in the moments before some dramatic Game 6 home runs by Angels Scott Spiezio and Darin Erstad, and a clutch double by Troy Glaus, somebody had hedged their bets with the champagne, emblazoning each bottle with these words: “San Francisco Giants World Series Champions.”
And a night later, late in Game 7 — with the Angels winning 4-1 — those same words were still on the bottles in the bin.
So Higdon and Blum quickly swapped out every Giants bottle for an Angels bottle.
And hours later — after the players’ had happily trashed their clubhouse and the clubhouse crew had happily cleaned it all up — Higdon and Blum celebrated with several Coors Lights.
That’s what clubbies do.
Shock
Ken Higdon died Jan. 4 after eight days in a coma following a routine back surgery procedure. He was 53.
“He just stopped breathing,” said his wife, Sabrina.
She was an Angel, too. Sabrina Higdon met him while she worked in the club’s sponsorship sales department. They both left the team in 2009 and were married that same year. In their years after baseball, they built their dream house on a lake in Sandpoint, Idaho. Higdon had back troubles and on the day after Christmas he flew back to Los Angeles for surgery to lessen the pain.
For eight days, friends and family visited Higdon at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Clubbies, Angels front office personnel, former players — a parade visited that room, just talking, hoping their words could coax him back.
“I sat in Kenny’s room for about an hour,” said Blum, who is now helping the Oakland A’s get ready for spring training in Arizona. “I told him I had just been to the winter meetings, and I saw some of his old friends. And then I said, ‘Wake up.’ It was unreal. Seeing this big man there in bed. Unreal.”
Higdon never regained consciousness.
Many of the same family and friends were at a celebration of Higdon’s life at Fred’s Mexican Cafe in Huntington Beach on Jan. 7. The guest list included Darin Erstad, Troy Percival, Adam Kennedy, Mike Scioscia, Mark Trumbo and Ben Weber, among other Angels stars.
“Imagine the hours he put in long before we got to the field,” said Erstad, now the head baseball coach at University of Nebraska. “I couldn’t begin to describe what he did to make our lives unbelievable.
“He was family.”
And a few weeks later, just a few of his buddies you’ve never heard of, went to Brian’s Beer and Billiards in Fullerton to hoist a few Coors Lights in Ken’s honor.
“I think about him every day,” said former Angels public relations man Larry Babcock. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Spring
In spring training, the clubhouse manager arrives at 4 a.m. He puts on a pot of coffee, makes sure the clubhouse is clean. He puts the baseballs on the field for morning workouts.
He oversees morning laundry. He cleans the clubhouse after batting practice. He oversees lunch. He cleans up after lunch. He oversees batting practice laundry. He makes sure snacks are available for the players after the spring training games. He oversees post-game laundry. This list is by no means complete.
He finally leaves the ballpark between 6 and 7 p.m.
“He was the mom of the clubhouse,” Sabrina said. “He provided the food and laundry service. He made sure the players had underwear. He was behind the scenes, the backbone.”
Higdon had been working in baseball clubhouses since he was 15. He grew up in Tacoma, Wash., and worked for the A’s minor league team in his hometown.
He switched organizations and got called up to the Angels major league club in 1994. Sabrina said he used to love to tell stories about Angels star Tim Salmon.
He said he remembered sitting near Salmon on a flight when the star outfielder looked out the window and said, “We are up really high.” Or there was the time Salmon was holding a drink with ice. “This is really cold,” Salmon said. Higdon called them “Tim-isms.” Erstad remembered one: “Salmon would go in a restaurant and order eggs … any style.”
Sabrina asked Ken, who was not yet her husband, to tell his baseball stories in front of her sponsorship clients. But she remembers that his favorite story was about being in a nearly empty bar in San Francisco when Clint Eastwood walked in. Eastwood, Higdon would recall, wanted to play the piano. So the movie star played a couple of songs for Higdon and a few buddies, and then bought them a round of drinks.
“He was so much fun,” Sabrina said.
In 2009, it stopped being fun. Sabrina wouldn’t elaborate, but she said Higdon “was done” and the Angels were done with him. “The feeling was mutual,” she said.
Tim Mead, the Angels’ Vice President, Communications, and longtime Higdon friend, agreed that the parting was mutual.
“Things take their toll — physically and mentally,” Mead said. “Kenny’s heart remained with the Angels. Kenny’s contribution will remain with the Angels. And Kenny’s memory will remain with the Angels.”
After 2009, the clubbie just slipped away.
He never went to another Angels game. He didn’t watch the games on TV. Sabrina said Higdon liked the stuff around the game more than the game itself.
He went from taking care of 50-plus men to taking care of Sabrina. On nights she was planning to cook, she would find dinner already made. When she thought she needed to go to the store, her husband would have already shopped and put the groceries away. Laundry? That was often done too.
“We would argue about who was cooking dinner, who was doing laundry, who was going shopping,” she said with a laugh.
Kids
On the wall of Ken Higdon’s man cave in Sandpoint, along with pictures of Nolan Ryan and Rod Carew and other Angel greats, is the New York Times article about the death of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart.
The article is about Higdon’s effort to carry Adenhart’s jersey to every Angels game, home and away. Adenhart was killed April 9, 2009, after pitching six shutout innings for the Angels. Adenhart was a passenger in a car that was hit by a drunk driver.
“Adenhart was such a good kid,” Sabrina said. “He worked so hard. Ken couldn’t understand the unfairness of it.”
What Higdon rarely mentioned was that the Adenhart tragedy had another meaning to him.
Higdon’s older sister, who was 5 years old at the time, was killed by a drunk driver. His father, a police officer, was called to the scene of the accident.
“Ken’s parents have been through a lot,” Sabrina said. “Her name was Connie.”
Angels
On opening night of this baseball season, the Angels will include Ken Higdon’s picture in their “In Memorium” scoreboard tribute.
“It’s still surreal,” Mead said. “It is incredible. Unbelievable. It is grossly unfair.”
Mead said he will remember Higdon as a clubbie, a counselor, a mentor to young players and a confidant to his friends across all levels of the Angels organization.
“I will remember his gentle heart,” Mead said.
Mead is still struggling with his friend’s death.
“The hardest thing for me is knowing he had his dream ahead of him,” Mead said. “The house. The lake. That’s what’s so hard. We lost one of our own.
“Once an Angel, always an Angel.”
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