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The Angels seem to do everything right. Their starting pitching is phenomenal. Anytime Jon Garland is your number five starter and you had 2 starters in the all-star game, neither of them being your ace John Lackey, and you are doing this all with a guy who nearly won the Cy Young last season, Kelvim Escobar, having missed the entire season with injury, your starting pitching is historically good.

The Los Angeles Angels earned themselves a weekend sweep at home of the defending World Series champion Boston Red Sox and I mean earned. They came from behind twice, both times late in the game. The Angels now have the Major’s best record and, I’m not giving up on the Red Sox, but they look for real and have the look of a champion.

Their bullpen may be even better. They have an excellent set up crew and do not often give leads back. Francisco Rodriguez has 40 saves and, no it isn’t September; it’s July. K-Rod has the chance to not only break, but shatter the all-time single season saves record of 57.

Their offense doesn’t have true homerun power, but they can hit homeruns and they manufacture runs. Chone Figgins is one of the most underrated players in baseball. He may have been the MVP of the league last season because of what he does for this team. He’ll hit at a .300 clip and steal bases almost every time he’s on. That means there is a 30% you’ll have a man at 2nd, with none out, in the first. Casey Kotchman is the type of #2 hitter than can handle the bat, get Figgins over to 3rd, and get a single up the middle if no one is on. Then, you get to the “power” guys in Vladimir Guerrero and Torii Hunter and you have a good chance to score in every inning and slowly build leads, or chip away at them.

They also have one of the best coaches in the world in Mike Scioscia and a very underrated GM. Their GM has taken a lot of heat for not making moves in the past, for big power hitters. He took heat for not trading for Mark Teixiera last season or Miguel Tejada in the off season or even Matt Holliday now. However, he doesn’t need those guys and the guys that would have had to give up, normally become stars. Last season they had the opportunity to trade Casey Kotchman, Joe Saunders, and Ervin Santana to the Rangers for Mark Teixiera. At the time, that might have seemed like a good move. Santana was struggling, Saunders was a sort of middle of the road prospect, and Teixiera would have been a huge upgrade over Casey Kotchman at first base. Now, Kotchman is a .300 hitter and both Santana and Saunders are all-stars, this season.

The Angels have a system in place with their manager and GM. They draft guys in a mold and call them up, without ever really having to go outside of the organization for help. They make do with what they have moneywise, which is not really that much. They aren’t necessarily like the Marlins who wait 5 years to be very good for 2-3 years or even really the A’s, who are good for 4-5 years, and then have 2 off years. They are like the Braves in the 90s, who had the established manager in Bobby Cox and the homegrown talent built in a mold.

That Braves team won the division every year for 14 years. The Angels are like that. They are in it every year, without having to have a giant payroll. They have been in it every year since 2000 and, while they only have one World Series title, in 2002, they have been very close other years and always give themselves the chance to win. This might be the year they win again.

There will never be another scene quite like it, or another match, for that matter. Wimbledon closed down a 132-year era Sunday night with the greatest tennis match ever played.

That’s not just The Chronicle’s opinion, but the measured view of Bud Collins and a half-dozen of the most experienced tennis writers in the world, all of them in a state of stunned admiration as they sat down to address their keyboards. They held fast to the John McEnroe-Bjorn Borg legend for 28 years, and hated to give it up, but Rafael Nadal’s 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7 victory over Roger Federer set the standard of brilliance.

An innovative Centre Court roof, retractable and an answer to every rainstorm, will be in place next year - and not a moment too soon. It was so dark at 9:16 p.m., the moment Federer’s netted forehand ended this match, they couldn’t have played another game. But that only adds to the magic. Bared to the skies since 1877, the fabled venue seemed to take on a mind of its own, extending the last roofless Wimbledon until the last vestiges of light.

What a scene: Nadal flat on his back after four hours and 48 minutes of glory, the longest Wimbledon final in history, made nearly two hours longer by a pair of rain delays. Nadal propelling himself into the Friends Box (leave it to Rafa to take the most difficult route) and coming out of it with a Spanish flag. Nadal walking along the roof above the TV broadcasters to reach the Spanish royalty, Prince Felipe and Princess Letizia of Asturias, who made the very worthwhile journey to London. And then Nadal back on the court, in a swirl of flashbulbs, to celebrate the first Wimbledon men’s victory by a Spaniard since Manuel Santana in 1966.

Even for those who have closely followed Nadal’s career, it was difficult to grasp the breadth of his accomplishment. He should have been a broken man after those two spirit-crushing tiebreakers. Time after time, on crucial points, Federer rendered him helpless with punishing aces. Federer is “the best in the history,” as Nadal put it, and once his disappointment gives way to perspective, he’ll know he hit some of the most clutch shots ever witnessed.

“It’s hard for me to appreciate it right now,” Federer said afterward. “I can’t look at it as a feel-good thing. Probably later in life, I’ll be happy about the way I fought, the way it lived up to expectations. And congratulations to Rafa, a great competitor.”

It was altogether fitting that Borg was in the stands, bundled up against the rain and chill in the Royal Box. Nadal became the first man since Borg to win the French Open and Wimbledon consecutively (Borg did it three years in a row, 1978-80). The way Nadal took down Federer, who had won the last five Wimbledons, was reminiscent of McEnroe’s brazen challenge to Borg, hastening him into an early retirement. Most relevant, though, was the comparison to Borg’s 1-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-7 (16), 8-6 victory over McEnroe in the 1980 Wimbledon final.

There’s no question that the 18-16 tiebreaker represented the most riveting episode in the sport’s history, as untouchable as Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. The case for Federer-Nadal rests on its unrelenting tension, the sustained brilliance, the fact that neither man let a troubling moment get him down. Forget any notion that Nadal is “in Federer’s head,” as some observed after the French Open. Maybe that was true in Paris, but not here. Federer was simply beaten, and if you witnessed his sequence of down-the-line forehand winners - there must have been 25 of them, each more mind-blowing than the last - you wondered how that was possible.

“I only saw one case of nerves,” said Collins, of ESPN and the Boston Globe, a man who attended his first Wimbledon in 1961. “That’s when Nadal double-faulted with that 5-2 lead in the fourth-set tiebreaker. Both guys just fought and fought, not a single letdown. Losing that tiebreaker would have destroyed most guys. But not Rafa. Jesus, is he tough.”

Try to imagine putting up this five-set scoreline against Federer: 66669. That’s what it took to keep Federer and Borg tied at five straight Wimbledons. Federer closed out the third set in a blur of aces and forehands, but the fourth-set tiebreaker swung hard the other way, Nadal holding that 5-2 lead with two serves coming. His double fault was a net-cord job, trickling over but landing wide, and Federer shot him a look as if to say, “You’re giving me that now?”

The thing about Nadal, separating him from most everyone in tennis, is that he fights harder than an angry pit bull. The fact that he might have choked, in sports parlance, didn’t occur to him. He came up with such a sensational shot at 7-7, a down-the-line forehand pass on the dead run, “I really thought it was over,” Federer admitted. But that’s when Federer defined himself, answering that excruciating match-point pressure with the calmest of backhand winners, struck cleanly down the line. And as the match drew even, Federer raised the possibility of becoming the first man since Henri Cochet, in 1927, to come from two sets down to win a Wimbledon final.

Although it only stalled the inevitable, Federer hit a shot in that final game I still can’t believe. It was match point at 40-30 for Nadal, and he put a first serve exactly where he wanted it. With the casual aplomb of a gentleman pouring a glass of wine, Federer sent it whistling through the darkness with a blistering cross-court backhand winner. “No, that I cannot believe,” said Nadal, who struggled to express his feelings when he was interviewed in English. “I can’t see nothing, no?”

When it came to the next match point, advantage Nadal, the dwindling light almost demanded a conclusion. Federer sent his fateful forehand into the net, and “that was the irony of it,” Collins said. “Here’s Federer with the best forehand the sport has ever seen, and he puts a routine ball into the net. But then, that’s the story of Nadal. He always makes you hit one more shot than you want to.”

So it’s on to the retractable-roof era, a development tinged with regret. There’s nothing in sports like a compelling Centre Court match in the fresh air of southeast England, whether it’s still, blustery or damp. Recent years, though, have brought a succession of maddening rainouts and delays, softening a traditionalist’s heart. What I heard, from a tiny elf in the catacombs, is that once the roof becomes available, it will never rain again. In the wake of tennis’ greatest match, all things are possible.

Briefly: The Bryan brothers, the twins from Stanford, were on opposite sides of the net for Sunday’s mixed doubles championship match. Bob Bryan teamed with Samantha Stosur of Australia to beat top-seeded Mike Bryan and Katarina Srebotnik of Slovenia 7-5, 6-4. It was the second time the brothers, who are ranked No. 1 in men’s doubles and have won five Grand Slam titles together, have faced each other in a major final. Six years ago, Mike paired with Lisa Raymond to defeat Bob and Srebotnik for the U.S. Open title.