Black Makes It Dark Night for Angels : Royals Score 4-0 Victory on His Three-Hit Pitching and Again Tie Up AL West

No surprise.

There has been a feeling for several years it would come to this, a season in which no one would (or could) win the American League West.

The Angels, a boring 36-35 since the All-Star break and losers of six of their last nine games, had a chance Wednesday night to take a two-game lead over Kansas City--a virtually insurmountable lead with four games to play. Champagne time.

They responded with an embarrassingly inept and unaggressive performance that helped create another tie for the division lead, the eighth in the last 14 days.

Bud Black, who had won only one of his last nine starts and pitched five innings or less in seven of them, restricted the Angels to three hits in a 4-0 victory.

George Brett’s three-run, inside-the-park homer in the first inning marred a strong performance by Ron Romanick, a victim of suspect outfielding.

“They do what they have to do,” Angel Manager Gene Mauch said of his team.

“We’ll win tomorrow.”

Don Sutton (15-9) faces the Royals’ Danny Jackson (13-12) in the series finale tonight.

Said Brett: “We’ve been saying all week that each of these games is the most important of the year. Now we can both say it.”

Both teams believe a lead is imperative going into the final weekend of the regular season. The Angels will spend it in Texas. The Royals are at home against Oakland.

There have been so many ties, however, that it’s now as if a Monday playoff is preordained.

Said Reggie Jackson: “A few of the guys are already talking about it. They think we’ll be back Monday.”

The Angels led this race by 7 1/2 games on July 21. The Royals led by 3 on Sept. 14. It has now become a race with no apparent end.

And very little interest.

The Angels and Royals averaged 33,400 for three early September games in Anaheim.

Wednesday night’s attendance here was 28,401, up from 26,273 Tuesday night.

“The only electricity is in the lights,” Dan Quisenberry, the Royals’ relief ace, acknowledged. “Maybe it’s a case of having some responsible parents who don’t want their kids to be out late on school nights.”

No one was out late Wednesday. Black, 17-12 last year but 10-15 this year and a loser of 12 of his previous 16 decisions, needed only 2 hours 8 minutes to pitch his first shutout since May 21.

“The way he was pitching,” Mauch said, “we might have played a couple more hours without scoring. He picked a bad time to pitch one of his better games.”

A control specialist who had been plagued by an inability to get his breaking pitches over, Black struck out five, walked two and allowed only one runner to reach second.

Bobby Grich looped a single to right in the second, Doug DeCinces grounded a single to center in the seventh, and Gary Pettis legged out a single to deep short in the eighth.

“When he’s on,” Mauch said of Black, “he can run that little slider in on your hands. He busted a couple of bats with it tonight.”

Both belonged to DeCinces. The first broke when he grounded to third in the fifth. The second when he grounded to third as the final out of the game. DeCinces credited Black’s slider for breaking the first.

“But I hit the last one on the fat part of the bat,” he said. “It was plain old crappy wood. I’m going to send it to Louisville.”

All of the Angels’ bats have appeared to be broken against the Royals, who now lead the 1985 series, 8-4.

“I’m bewildered by how they’ve contained us,” Mauch said. “They’ve shut us out three times and held us to one run five times.

“Bewildered or perplexed. One of those.”

Mauch was not alone. Romanick, too, was perplexed.

“I didn’t make one bad pitch,” he said, “and I was down, 3-0. That’s hard to take. You’ve got to grit your teeth and keep going. I probably pitched my best game of the year after that first inning, but Black did it for nine innings and I did it for seven. That was the difference.”

Mauch agreed.

“No one in the world will realize what a fine game Ron pitched,” he said. “There wasn’t a ball hit off the fat of the bat until (Buddy) Biancalana got his single to center (with one out in the second).”

Romanick jammed Royal leadoff hitter Lonnie Smith, who looped a single to left center, where Brian Downing approached the seemingly catchable fly with inexplicable caution.

Smith then stole second, and Romanick followed with a costly mistake, hitting Willie Wilson on a two-strike pitch. Brett now hit a fastball off the end of his bat, pulling a high fly down the right-field line.

Juan Beniquez, playing Brett straightaway, made a long run and frantic dive, but the ball bounced past him to the wall. Center fielder Gary Pettis raced to retrieve it, but Brett ultimately beat the relay. It was his 27th homer of the year, the second inside-the-park homer of his career.

Asked about the Beniquez approach, Mauch said he never questions a player’s judgement because it only leads to confusion.

“If you’re asking me if he could have caught it,” Mauch said, “my answer is no. Trap it? Yes, which is what he was trying to do.”

Beniquez disagreed, saying he was trying to catch it.

“I can’t think defensively,” he said. “I have to try to catch it to hold the two runners on base. If I lay back, they both score anyway. I feel I did my best. I feel I did what I had to do.”

Mauch felt that had Beniquez trapped it the Royals would have emerged from that inning with only one run.

Romanick, now 14-9 with only one win in his last 10 starts, said his immediate reaction was to think both the Smith and Brett hits would be caught.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “we didn’t have people there. It’s the way the game is. Brian must have froze three or four times when he lost balls in the lights. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Downing froze on a Steve Balboni single in the eighth, when the Royals got three singles and a final run.

Now?

“The pressure is not off them and on us. The pressure is on both of us,” Grich said. “It’s amazing how you can play 158 games and still be tied, but this is the second year in a row that its gone down to the wire.”

Leaving it up to Sutton, who is ineligible for the playoffs if he helps put the Angels in them.

Angel Notes

Angel scouting director Larry Himes is one of three finalists for the general manager’s position with the Seattle Mariners and will be interviewed by Mariner owner George Argyros today. Dick Balderson, the Kansas City player development director, and Ray Poitevint, Milwaukee’s player procurement director, are also in the running. “It’s my understanding that a decision will be made by the middle of next week,” Himes said Wednesday. . . . Win or lose, Kansas City Manager Dick Howser is still bristling over the comments of Minnesota Manager Ray Miller in the wake of the Twins’ three-game sweep last weekend. Miller said the Royals were flat, possibly done in by stress. “I find it interesting that a club 25 games under .500 was talking about us being flat,” Howser said. “After a young manager is around awhile, he’ll learn to get more concerned about his own club. Guys like that get a chance to say a lot of things about a lot of clubs because they bounce from job to job.”