Mariners beat Angels, 3-2, in game delayed by swarming bees

C.J. Wilson’s nine-game winning streak, which spanned 13 starts dating to July 10, ended Sunday when the Angels left-hander gave up a two-run home run to switch-hitter Justin Smoak in the sixth inning of a 3-2 loss to the Seattle Mariners at Angel Stadium.

Wilson (17-7) was one out away from preserving a 1-1 tie in the sixth when Smoak, with a runner on third, curled his home run around the left-field foul pole. It was his 18th homer of the season but his first from the right side.

Kole Calhoun led off the eighth inning with a solo homer to right-center field, his eighth in only 51 games this season, to pull the Angels to within 3-2.

But Mariners reliever Yoervis Medina retired J.B. Shuck and Eric Aybar to end the eighth, and Danny Farquhar threw a scoreless ninth, as the Angels lost for only the eighth time in 29 games.

Wilson went 8 1/3 innings, surpassing the 200-inning mark for the fourth consecutive season. He gave up three runs and eight hits, struck out nine and walked one while throwing 123 pitches.

Seattle starter Felix Hernandez, sidelined for the previous three weeks because of a strained oblique muscle, gave up one run and four hits in four innings, striking out 10.

The game was delayed for 23 minutes in the bottom of the third inning when a swarm of bees congregated near the right-center-field wall, forcing players off the field and many fans in the right-field bleachers to evacuate -- on fan appreciation day, no less.

Luckily for the Angels, a fan in a dugout suite who has bee-handling experience stepped forward. Johnny Poto, who works for Honey Pacifica, a Long Beach company that sells raw honey products, took a stepladder and a box, presumably filled with honey, to the outfield and lured enough bees for the game to resume.

There was another brief delay in the top of the fourth inning when Calhoun, the Angels’ right fielder, noticed a small cluster of bees in the ground near his position. A stadium employee came out and blasted the bees with a fire extinguisher filled with carbon dioxide. End of problem.

The teams traded runs in the second inning, Seattle scoring on doubles by Kendrys Morales and Mike Zunino and the Angels scoring on Efren Navarro’s RBI fielder’s choice that scored Howie Kendrick, who had reached on a one-out double.

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