Their day is big deal

BOSTON -- He was so excited his heart was “beating faster.” He was so nervous, he was “trying not to shake so bad.”

Was it John Lackey, who took a no-hitter into the ninth inning against one of baseball’s most prolific lineups Tuesday night, who was feeling so stressed?

Nope, it was catcher Jeff Mathis, who was on the receiving end of Lackey’s brilliant effort that fell two outs short of history.

Dustin Pedroia broke up Lackey’s no-hit bid with a one-out single to left field in the ninth, and Kevin Youkilis ended his shutout bid with a two-run homer, but Lackey was able to finish off the Boston Red Sox in a 6-2 Angels victory in Fenway Park.

Lackey’s 120-pitch complete game, in which he struck out four and walked two, gave the Angels their seventh straight regular-season win over the team that has a nine-game playoff win streak against the Angels.

The Angels have won 11 of 13, and they padded their major league-best overall (66-40) and road (35-19) records. They are 4-1 on what was supposed to be a grueling 10-game trip to Baltimore, Boston and New York.

Yet, their sense of achievement, and the excitement and anticipation surrounding the arrival of slugger Mark Teixeira, who was acquired from Atlanta earlier Tuesday, was tinged with disappointment.

“I can’t even explain it,” Mathis said, when asked how he felt after Pedroia’s single. “I don’t want to say I was crushed, but it was a tough feeling.”

And a weird one.

“It’s like there’s a white elephant in the dugout,” Manager Mike Scioscia said. “Nobody wants to talk to John. Nobody is mentioning the no-hitter, but we all knew there was an opportunity for John to do something special. You get a hit into left field, your heart drops a little bit. You’re disappointed.”

Lackey had no regrets.

“I gave up the hit with a curve -- that’s my best pitch,” said Lackey, who improved to 9-2 with a 2.93 earned-run average. “I can sleep on that.”

Most games against the Red Sox leave Lackey tossing and turning -- he had a 2-6 record and 6.01 ERA against Boston and was 1-4 with a 7.46 ERA in Fenway Park before Tuesday.

Lackey also gave up 20 earned runs and 35 hits, including six home runs, in 23 2/3 innings of his previous four starts, admitting he was going through “a little dead-arm phase.”

But there was plenty of life in that arm Tuesday, as Lackey threw first-pitch strikes to 21 of 32 batters and allowed only two baserunners through eight, on a hit batsman and a walk.

“My fastball definitely felt better in the bullpen,” Lackey said. “I had more life on it than the last couple of starts.”

Lackey challenged hitters with his fastball early and went more to his curve and slider in the sixth inning. The closest the Red Sox came to a hit through eight was David Ortiz’s seventh-inning drive to the wall in right.

Lackey was the first Angel to record a complete-game victory in Fenway since Chuck Finley’s 1-0 win on Aug. 17, 1990. No opposing pitcher has thrown a no-hitter at Fenway since Detroit’s Jim Bunning in 1958.

“He threw up in the zone when he wanted to elevate, he threw his fastball with an angle down in the zone,” Boston Manager Terry Francona said. “He threw very good breaking balls -- even in the count, behind in the count, ahead in the count. Until the very end, we didn’t do anything.”

Lackey struck out Jacoby Ellsbury to open the ninth, and Youkilis followed Pedroia’s single with a two-run homer over the Green Monster in left. But Lackey got Ortiz to pop out, walked Manny Ramirez and got Mike Lowell to ground out.

As he left the field, Lackey was greeted by a rousing ovation from fans behind the Angels’ dugout.

“You can’t get a better pitched game than that,” Scioscia said. “Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite finish off a no-hitter or shutout, but against that lineup, to pitch that well and that deep into the game, that’s a great game by John Lackey.”

The Angels made the most of seven hits, scoring twice in the third, fourth and seventh innings. Garret Anderson hit a two-run homer in the fourth, and Maicer Izturis drove in two runs.

“A no-hitter would have been nice,” Lackey said, “but I just wanted to win the game.”

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mike.digiovanna@latimes.com