Baseball: 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...