Angels Draw Mauch’s Ire After 6-1 Loss

The doors to the Angels’ clubhouse at Anaheim Stadium were locked only briefly Saturday.

“I’ve already got it out of my system,” Manager Gene Mauch then told the media.

“I can tell ‘em everything I know in a minute.”

The Little General had berated his troops in the wake of a 6-1 loss to the New York Yankees, one that followed the Yankees’ 6-0 victory in the series opener by only a few hours.

“I think Gene obviously felt frustrated, obviously felt like screaming,” second baseman Bobby Grich said. “We aren’t advancing runners, aren’t scoring runs with outs when we have the opportunity, aren’t doing the little things that we had been doing.

“It’s a low point. We’re definitely down right now. If one guy was hot, it would be infectious, but nobody’s hot, nobody’s swinging good, so the downer becomes infectious.

“We all feel like screaming, and I’m next. I’ll probably do it on the freeway.

“I’m about ready to snap. This is when you earn your money.”

Grich has seven hits in his last 53 at-bats. His .386 average of April 29 is now .266. The Angels’ only .300 hitter is Darrell Miller, who has 10 at-bats.

The Angels got only three hits Friday night and six Saturday. A crowd of 32,936 saw Tommy John re-establish his position in the Angels’ rotation only to leave in the seventh on the short end of a 3-1 score.

The Yankees then scored three more off Doug Corbett in the eighth, ensuring their sixth straight win and their 12th in the 17 games since Billy Martin replaced Yogi Berra as manager.

Joe Cowley, who scattered six hits over 6 innings, combined with Brian Fisher, who worked a flawless 2 innings, to hand the Angels their sixth loss in the last nine games.

It would have been their fifth in a row except for the six-run, ninth-inning rally at Toronto Wednesday night. The Angels, fundamentally sound through the first month, have made up for it in the last week.

Reggie Jackson boiled it down to the two games with the Yankees and said: “We weren’t this bad for the first 33 games, but the 34th and 35th have been horse bleep. We just haven’t done the job.

“From Canada to the U.S. . . . customs must have messed us up.”

It has been building up for Mauch, who saw the Angels fail to score after putting their first two runners on in the first and having their leadoff batter reach second in the second. In neither case were the runners advanced by the next batter.

Cowley came in with a 1-2 record and 4.80 earned-run average, but the Angels scored only when Rob Wilfong, Jerry Narron and Dick Schofield singled in the sixth.

The Angels had the bases loaded with two outs in that inning, but Ruppert Jones then grounded out.

Of the ensuing Mauch tirade, Jackson said: “He’s got to be the fall guy. Sometimes a player can do it, but it’s his responsibility. . . . He’s got to tell us. We understand and respect him for it. I mean, it’s a tough thing to do what he did today. It would be easy if he could mope around and be our buddy.”

Mauch was comparatively relaxed once the media reached his office. He said his team had simply stopped being opportunistic, scoring the “gimme runs when they are there for us.”

“If we play like we can,” Mauch said, “T.J. is leading the game, 3-2, after four innings.

“It might be the pitching we’re facing, I don’t know. It doesn’t look all that impressive to me.

“Fifty percent of our outs against (Phil) Niekro last night were on something less than his best pitch.

“Today, we weren’t striking out on strikes, we were striking out on balls.”

Mauch said he was confident, however, that his team would regain its winning form.

“It’ll come,” he said. “I know it. It always does.”

He also said that John had pitched well and would remain in the rotation after moving to the bullpen to make three relief appearances when the Angels briefly went to a four-man rotation because of days off.

His record now a misleading 2-3 with a 4.75 ERA, John scattered seven hits in 6 innings, retiring 12 in a row at one point. Rickey Henderson’s two-run single in the second was the only damage off John until Bobby Meacham singled in a run in the seventh. Willie Randolph’s two-run double was the big hit as the Yankees scored three off Corbett in the eighth.

John said his role hasn’t been defined.

“I believe in preparation,” he said, “but when you’re in the spot I’m in now, it’s hard to do.

“I want to pitch, I want to win, but I can’t do anything more than pitch when they tell me to.”

Angel Notes

Here are the top three pitchers on the Angels’ shopping list: the Cleveland Indians’ Bert Blyleven, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ John Candelaria and the Montreal Expos’ Steve Rogers. A source requesting anonymity said Cleveland has talked to all three Southern California teams--the Dodgers, Padres and Angels--about Blyleven, an Orange County resident who has long been anxious to return home. . . .Manager Billy Martin said the Yankees’ goal is to “stay close, stay in good physical shape, and when the middle of the lineup comes around, we could be awesome. We’re taking the extra base, playing the way we should play. I’m just sitting back and enjoying it.”. . . Bobby Grich on his slump: “I don’t know what’s happened. I looked at films today and have been trying several different things. It’s elusive. It’s like the Frank Sinatra song, ‘flying high in April, shot down in May.’ Maybe I’ll be on top again in June.” . . . Pitcher Frank LaCorte, who signed a three-year, $900,000 contract with the Angels before the 1984 season and then appeared in only 13 games because of ineffectiveness and a weakening of his shoulder muscles, will have surgery for removal of calcium from his shoulder next week. LaCorte went on the disabled list April 1. He is out for the season. . . . Reggie Jackson celebrated his 39th birthday with an 0-for-3. . . . Shay Torrent, the Big A’s organist, caught a glare from Jackson, who was in the batters’ box, waiting for a pitch from Joe Cowley in the third inning, when Torrent played “Happy Birthday,” forcing Jackson to step out as the crowd applauded. . . . The Angels’ Jim Slaton (2-3) faces the Yankees’ Ed Whitson (1-4) in the series finale today at 1 p.m.