Taking a look back at the Angels' wild first homestand

This story was excerpted from Rhett Bollinger’s Angels Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

ANAHEIM -- It would be easy to confuse the Angels with highly entertaining reality television at this point.

There was the home opener on Friday against the Mariners that started with the flyover during the national anthem getting mistimed, causing singer Alexandra Castle to pause and slow down to try to allow the five North American AT-6 aircrafts to reach Angel Stadium.

It set the tone for a wild homestand against the Mariners and Braves that also saw Jo Adell incredibly rob three home runs on Saturday, Nolan Schanuel deliver a walk-off on Sunday after Mike Trout left the game following a hit-by-pitch on the left hand from reliever Casey Legumina, José Soriano fire off eight dominant innings against the Braves on Monday and Jorge Soler start an epic brawl with right-hander Reynaldo López on Tuesday in Trout’s return on his 400th homer bobblehead night.

It started Friday night, when Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo went up and in on a fastball to Trout in his first at-bat and then fired a second one at 95 mph that hit Trout on the shoulder. It fired up the sold-out crowd in the home opener. Trout later hit what looked like a sure-fire go-ahead homer, but it was an unusually windy night, so the deep drive to left was pushed in by 15 feet in an eventual 3-1 loss.

Woo apologized to Trout during the game as Trout jogged the near mound after a foul ball, and it looked like the whole thing would blow over despite the two clubs having history, including the Angels and Mariners getting into a memorable brawl in 2022 after the Angels retaliated for Trout being hit by a pitch.

Things did simmer down between the clubs on Saturday, when Adell put together what nine-time Gold Glove Award winner Torii Hunter called the best defensive game he’d ever seen in a 1-0 win in front of an absolutely frenzied sold-out crowd. Adell robbed Cal Raleigh of a homer in the first and Josh Naylor on a similar leaping catch at the wall in the eighth before he punctuated it with a game-saving catch in the ninth that saw him up in the stands down the right-field corner. It led to an epic photo from a fan with Adell triumphantly raising his glove in the air, and that glove will also be headed to the Hall of Fame after the season.

And as it turned out, the drama involving Trout getting hit by pitches wasn’t over. Just two days later, Trout was hit on his left hand from a fastball from Legumina that caused it to swell so much that they had to cut his batting glove off with scissors to remove it. Trout feared it was broken because of the loud sound it made and the immediate swelling, but said he dodged a bullet when X-rays came back negative and was diagnosed with only swelling. The Angels also got the last laugh when Schanuel clinched the series victory with a walk-off sacrifice fly in the 11th inning of a wild game that saw No. 4 prospect George Klassen make his Major League debut with right-hander Ryan Johnson scratched and eventually placed on the 15-day injured list with a viral infection.

It looked like Trout would miss at least a few days, but he surprisingly returned just in time for his bobblehead night on Tuesday. It was another big crowd on hand, and shortly after Angels broadcasters Mark Gubicza and Wayne Randazzo showed off the club’s hockey jersey promotional giveaway and Gubizca pretended to box, a hockey-style fight erupted at the Big A.

Soler charged the mound when López threw a pitch up and to the backstop after Soler had homered in his first at-bat and was hit by a pitch in his second. The two threw punches, including López hitting Soler on his helmet with the ball still in his hand. It led to an on-field scuffle involving both teams and Soler and López were each suspended for seven games on Wednesday with López’s reduced to five games.

Soler, though, appealed the decision, remained in the lineup for the series finale and fittingly homered in his first-at bat. But it came in an 8-2 loss to end a wild homestand with a 3-3 record and leave the Angels with a 6-7 mark on the year.