Behind the scenes: Angels’ fireworks crew - Local News - Orange County, CA - Santa Ana, CA on Astini News

& The Angels fan who drives a black GMC heavy-duty pickup with the PYRO DAD license plates arrives at least three hours before every Angels home game and five hours before 14 seasons of Big Bang Fridays. &

Bob Lake, a licensed pyrotechnician for Rialto-based Pyro Spectaculars, is the steady-handed, mild-mannered man who triggers the fireworks at Angel Stadium, the unseen showman beneath the game's loudest, brightest, tallest and most explosive sideshow.

Click through the photos to see behind-the-scenes images of Big Bang Fridays.

The sky is his stage. Act I begins during the national anthem when the singer hits rockets. Lake, from his second-level perch behind the plate, launches red comets more than 300 feet high from the three pits in the left-center field rockpile.

By the time singer reaches red glare, he has set off an explosion of small, white stars in a sky shrub that hangs about 200 feet above the ballpark.

Just before the singer belts out bombs bursting in air, he sends into flight a crackling array of mines that can shake the frothy heads off draft beers in center field.

The finale -- boom, crackle, bang, boom! -- comes just after we hear the last syllable in the home of the brave.

And that, as a pall of smoke settles over the outfield, is just the beginning of Lake's long night, which includes pyro blasts to celebrate each Angels home run and a potential finale encore after a victory.

Everybody has a job but some are better than others and this one is pretty good, said Lake, 60, of Cerritos, who left his job with the phone company 20 years ago to decorate the atmosphere full time.

On a recent Friday, Lake and his son, Casey, who drives his own pickup with PYRO BOY plates, partnered on the six-man crew that orchestrated the fireworks spectacular after the Angels played the Minnesota Twins.

It's five hours of work for an eight-minute show, Bob Lake said. It hot, sweaty, hard work but when you see the fireworks go off and watch the people loving it, it's all worth it.

Lake began his pyromania in 1990, joining a high school friend for the Saturday night fireworks shows at the Queen Mary. He lugged around shells and mortars for a free dinner and a T-shirt.

After five years around fireworks, he became a licensed pyrotechnician, sending his five letters of recommendation to the state fire marshal and passing a written exam. His older son, Scott, an Orange County firefighter and former pyrotechnician, added his father to the crew 14 years ago when the Angels began their Friday night postgame fireworks promotions.

My wife worries but I think it's in our blood, said Bob Lake, who has launched fireworks at Disneyland, inside Staples Center for Clippers and Sparks games, at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics and during Los Angeles Avengers Arena Football League games.

His younger son, Casey, 31, also has a career in fireworks. He has gone on the road with AC/DC and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mick Jagger backstage at a Rolling Stones concert. He fit a few Angels games into his schedule before heading to Australia and Japan to tour with Motley Crue.

Angels players and coaches zipped by in shiny sports cars and SUVs, passing the empty parking lot 8A behind center field, where father and son and the Pyro Spectaculars crew unloaded a large Budget rental truck.

Bob Lake, a gray-haired, mustached man with wire-framed glasses, was wearing a faded company T-shirt, baggy jean shorts, a carpenter's apron, gardener's gloves and dusty athletic shoes.

Let's get this stuff out of here, said Lake, hugging cardboard boxes each containing 17 pounds of fireworks and lowering them carefully into the arms of the younger guys with more limber backs.

Unloaded were a dozen boxes, four fire extinguishers, several wooden spools of wire, three coolers, two heavy trunks on wheels, and 70 color-coded wood racks each housing a row of five HDPE mortars.

From a manila envelope, Lake pulled show designer Ron Smith's blueprint and studied the layout for the fireworks that will discharge to the beat of songs by Queen. He directed the crew to arrange and nail together racks in modules or groups of three, four and five in three widely spaced areas around this section of parking lot turned discharge site.

Green racks contain 3-inch diameter mortars, purple racks 4-inchers, and orange racks 5-inchers. Each inch corresponds to about 70 feet of display height, meaning that aerial shells will illuminate between 210 to 350 feet above the ballpark.

Codes on the blueprint tell the crew which shells to put in which mortars. They wire the mortars and racks together and into a terminal. A computer, unlike Lake's manual control of fireworks during the anthem, home runs and victories, runs the Big Bang Friday show in a time-coded sequence choreographed to a 30th of a second.

It took about two hours of back-bending and hammering in the 95-degree heat to complete the outdoor setup. It's another two hours of heavy lifting to load shells into the rockpile's pits for the national anthem, up to six Angels home runs and potential sky celebration for a victory.

An hour before the game, Lake settled into his chair in a second-level office above the Diamond Club with an unobstructed view of the field and a pyrotechnician's computer built into the desk. He established radio contact with Angels entertainment manager Peter Bull and two Pyro Spectaculars crew members who stand guard around the rockpile to make sure the fallout area is clear of spectators.

Once the anthem is finished, Lake watched the game and armed his command center whenever the Angels batted. He has to be alert for their home runs, ready to hit the safety switch and pull the trigger on his joystick when a ball sails over the wall and Bull gives the cue, Fire, Fire, Fire!

It's 51/2 seconds from his fire to the sky's flash. (On Fridays, he also launches a teaser blast between the sixth and seventh innings to remind fans of the postgame show.)

I feel like I'm celebrating too, said Lake, happy to punctuate and Angels homer and victories with a stampede of light and sound.

He can't clap. But the night can.

-- Reporting from Anaheim

Check out other Angels' behind-the-scenes action with Giant Flag volunteers, Toriitown, Angels Strike Force, Angel Stadium ballhawks or the Angels Wives

Contact the writer: masmith@ocregister.com

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