An Out Away From Defeat, Angels Score Five Runs, Win, 7-6, Raise Lead to 2 1/2

The Angels have come from behind for 33 of their 70 victories this season.

And the 33rd may have been the most dramatic and pivotal yet.

Restricted to two hits through eight innings and trailing, 6-2, they scored five runs with two outs in the ninth to defeat the Detroit Tigers, 7-6, Friday night.

A disbelieving Anaheim Stadium crowd of 39,932 saw the Tigers contribute three walks and three errors to a rally that included singles by Dick Schofield and Gary Pettis, and that enabled the Angels to move 2 1/2 games ahead of Kansas City in the American League West.

Maybe.

Detroit Manager Sparky Anderson, responding to an incident in the first inning, played the game under protest. It seemed strictly academic as the Tigers took their lead into the ninth, but it is now likely that Anderson will see the protest through.

Angel Manager Gene Mauch saw none of the ninth-inning excitement after drawing an automatic ejection by plate umpire Larry Barnett in the eighth for protesting a called third strike on Pettis, who came back to deliver a key hit at the end.

It was a game in which Detroit starter Dan Petry left after only two innings because of the flu. His team already led, 6-0, having scored three runs in each of the first two innings off Ron Romanick, who did not come out for the third and now has an earned-run average of 11.32 in four starts since the strike.

Alan Fowlkes, purchased from Edmonton Thursday, when Urbano Lugo went on the disabled list, pitched four shutout innings in relief of Romanick and combined with Al Holland and Luis Sanchez to make this latest comeback possible. The Angel relievers restricted the Tigers to four hits over the last seven innings.

Left-hander Bill Scherrer had followed Petry and through the eighth had allowed only one hit--a two-run homer by Brian Downing in the sixth. It was Downing’s 17th home run of the season and his third in the last three games.

Scherrer registered his eighth strikeout to open the ninth, walked Reggie Jackson and was replaced by Willie Hernandez, who blew only one of 33 save opportunities last season but has blown 10 of 36 this year.

Hernandez quickly got Bobby Grich to ground into a force play but then walked Juan Beniquez and Bob Boone to load the bases.

Schofield followed with a single to left that scored Grich and Beniquez, making it 6-4.

The crowd was on its feet, pleading for more, which it promptly got.

Pettis followed with a single, scoring Boone, and the ball was bobbled by center fielder Kirk Gibson, allowing Pettis to take second. He continued to third when catcher Lance Parrish allowed the throw from Gibson to get away from him.

Veteran Aurelio Lopez was summoned and issued an intentional walk to Rod Carew.

Now it was Downing, the Angels’ hottest hitter.

Downing, batting .447 in August, smoked a grounder toward the hole on the left side. Third baseman Tom Brookens made a diving stab but delivered a one-bounce throw to first baseman Darrell Evans, who gloved it, then dropped it as Pettis scored the winning run.

The crowd made more noise than the nightly fireworks from nearby Disneyland. The exhilarated Angels streamed out of the dugout as if this were October and the next stop were the playoffs.

Said Downing, whose team is 28-10 in games decided by one run: “Just another miraculous finish.”

There have been no miracles for the 1984 world champions. Detroit is 8-7 in its last 15 games, and of the seven losses, five have gone to Hernandez. In each game he lost a lead of two runs or more in the eighth or ninth innings.

Has Sparky Anderson ever seen anything like it? “Never,” the manager said. “Never in the majors, the minors, never as a player or manager, never, never, never. I’m sure he (Hernandez) feels a hell of a lot worse than I do about it. How would you like to be him?”

As for his protest, Anderson did not elaborate. It was as if he knows he has little chance of winning it.

Parrish had tagged and scored from third on a Nelson Simmons fly to left in the first inning. The Angels thought Parrish had left third early. Romanick made an appeal throw, but umpire Dale Ford ruled that Parrish had waited for the catch.

Anderson, even though he had the Parrish run, emerged to argue that Romanick had made his throw while the Angels had two players in foul territory--catcher Jerry Narron and shortstop Schofield, who was backing up third base. The rule permits only one player in foul territory. Anderson instructed the umpires to announce the protest.

Asked later if he was worried that the game might have to be replayed, Mauch shook his head and said, “Not in the least.”

A Lou Whitaker leadoff triple, a Gibson single and an Evans double had highlighted Detroit’s three-run first.

Consecutive homers by Gibson, with a man on base, and Parrish supplied three runs in the second, all unearned after a Schofield error. It marked the ninth, 10th and 11th unearned runs the Angels have allowed in the last three games.

Romanick has gone more than 3 innings only once in his four starts since the strike, but his problems seemed forgotten amid the impressive debut of Fowlkes, who was 4-2 as a San Francisco rookie in 1982 and had not pitched in the majors since Sept. 8 of that year; the continued hot hitting of Downing; another brilliant catch by Pettis, who took extra bases away from Brookens in the eighth, and of course, that last, noisy hurrah.

Said the ejected but elated Mauch: “I didn’t see it, but I could hear it.”