Third night visiting in SoCal, and I was at the yard. That’s what you do when you’re an American expatriate and get home for any length of time. You go to the yard.

Angels Stadium, in this case. To bask in the baseball atmosphere, which is a very specific sports sensation — a sort of pleasant and distracted peanuts/Cracker Jack/Bud Light wait for those moments of intense action.

And to see Mike Trout, in person, for the first time.

(You may have heard of Trout. The Next Mickey Mantle, perhaps. And perhaps also the next American League MVP.)

But what left the biggest impression on me was the odd, almost eerie, disconnect between Angels fans and the man who ought to be the club’s best and most popular player, Albert Pujols.

The Angels in December signed Pujols to a 10-year, $254 million contract — the biggest contract in the history of a club that, until recently, generally had practiced fiscal restraint.

This is Year 1 of those 10 years, and Pujols already is 32, and when he didn’t hit a home run in the month of April, that perhaps spooked fans. Perhaps panicked some of them.

The notion that he would not be worth anything like $25.4 million a year in 2019, 2020, 2021 (when he would be 39, 40 and 41) … fans seemed to grasp that right off.

The notion that he might no longer be a superstar right this minute, at age 32 … was just plain alarming. An ordinary or sub-ordinary Pujols could be a franchise millstone for a decade.

Something seems to have happened, between player and fans, since that cold start.  Or maybe it was more about what did not happen between player and his public: A bonding process.

Pujols went 0-for-4 in the Angels’ limp, 7-0 loss to Tampa Bay, but he has recovered sufficiently that he is now on pace to put up some very good numbers — 35 homers, 44 doubles, 112 RBI, 90 runs. That’s a serious player, even if his normally stratospheric on-base percentage is down about 60 points from career norms.

But Angels fans have not committed to the man. When he comes to the plate, he gets no more reaction than does Alberto Callaspo. Pujols must grasp that fans are fonder, by far, of Trout and Mark Trumbo, for starters. And Torii Hunter, too.

And it makes for a relationship that is awkward, verging on unpleasant.

I understand from former colleagues that Pujols is not particularly quotable. That didn’t matter in St. Louis, where he spent the first 11 years of his career, because he mashed the ball with such regularity that he was the city’s favorite athlete — even if he didn’t talk much.

(I can vouch that his restaurant in St. Louis, at least before he left, was extremely popular, frequented by fans who just wanted to be around a place Albert owned and frequented.)

But leaving that club has meant abandoning the good will he built up in Missouri, where he should have spent the whole of his career. And his slow start here seems to have left Angels fans watching and waiting, rather than cheering and applauding.

They still are not sure if this guy will help carry the team for at least five years … or whether he will turn out to be one of the worst investments in club history.

He must feel their doubt every time his name is announced. This is a Hall of Famer … but Angels fans apparently want to see it with their own eyes. You can’t blame them, considering the amount of money the club has invested in the man.