Royals Win West Again--Angels Don’t Again : California Gets a 3-1 Victory and, a Bit Later, the Bad News

The death watch began Saturday in midmorning.

Angel owner Gene Autry stood in a hotel lobby here, signing autographs. He was asked about the club’s suddenly impoverished offense.

“I don’t know what the problem is,” he said. “Maybe, we’re too old.”

It continued a few hours later at Arlington Stadium, where Autry and a crowd of 8,853 saw the Angels erupt for four hits, including home runs by Reggie Jackson, 39, and Doug DeCinces, 35, in a 3-1 victory over the Rangers.

Hold the hearse. The Angels were still alive.

Two games behind Kansas City with two to play entering Saturday’s game, the Angels’ life-or-death status in the West Division race now hinged on the Royals’ night game with Oakland.

Would the Angels listen to the CBS radio broadcast?

Said DeCinces, alluding to his long struggle with back spasms: “I’ve gone through enough torture this year. Why would I want to put myself through more? I’m going to dinner.”

Said John Candelaria, who shrugged off elbow pain to pitch five shutout innings Saturday: “I have no control over what happens in Kansas City. That’s how you get ulcers. I’ll spend the evening with a book.”

Manager Gene Mauch, committed to having dinner with Gene and Jackie Autry, said that the Angels were still grasping at straws, “but when straws are all that’s left, you better grab ‘em. I mean, stranger things have happened. I just don’t know what they were.”

It wasn’t until about seven hours later that the Angels lost their grip on those slender straws. The Royals’ 5-4 victory over Oakland in 10 innings left the Angels with a magic number of 1986. Today’s regular-season finale with Texas is now meaningless. The ensuing charter flight will take the Angels back to California rather than to Kansas City for a Monday playoff.

No pennant for Autry, whose Angels have won only two division titles in 25 years. No pennant for the star-crossed Mauch, who has won only one division title in 24 managerial seasons.

Mauch and Autry had returned from dinner when they got the news on the CBS broadcast. They were among a group of executives and players who listened to the final innings in a suite that the club had rented as a media headquarters in the team’s hotel here.

Those last few innings may have been as tense in Texas as they were in Missouri.

“I’m going to buy everybody here some blood pressure medicine,” Jackie Autry said when the Royals failed to score in the ninth.

Her relaxed husband reacted to a quiet moment in the congested suite with a smile.

“Sounds like a funeral in here,” he said.

Then he shrugged and said, “I can’t get nervous over something I have no control over.”

At the final out, Autry stood, smiled, pointed to his watch and said: “It’s 11 o’clock. There’s nothing much we can do about it now.”

Mauch stood stone-faced. Jackie Autry patted him on the back. The press crowded in.

“That’s why my radio broke,” the manager said. “I wasn’t supposed to hear that.”

Then, with hands in his pockets and shoulders bent some, he slowly walked back to his room on the same floor. He hung a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, then shut the door quietly.

His Angels, leading the West by six games at the All-Star break and by one last Monday, have been going just as quietly.

Their futile and final bid to win a title that no one had predicted they would win included three straight losses and 8 in the last 11 games before Saturday’s. They had scored only six runs in the last 5 of those 11 games, and one run in the last 31 innings.

The slump bewildered Mauch, who has now managed the Angels to their two highest victory totals in club history.

The Saturday win was their 89th, eight more than last season and a total exceeded only by the 93 wins of 1982.

Asked if he could take satisfaction in that, Mauch said: “We don’t do this to satisfy me. I want to win.”

Mauch won Saturday with his 154th lineup. The Angels were desperate for a lift and got one via Jackson’s 27th homer of the year and 530th of his career. He followed a one-out, first-inning walk to Rod Carew by going to the opposite field against rookie right-hander Matt Williams, driving a fastball into the left-field bleachers. Jackson’s 84th and 85th RBIs were his first since Sept. 20.

Williams, obtained from Toronto in the Aug. 29 deal for Cliff Johnson, yielded a two-out single to Bobby Grich later in the first, then held the Angels hitless until DeCinces slugged his 20th homer with one out in the sixth.

An eighth-inning single by Brian Downing, who has only six hits in his last 38 at-bats, was the Angels’ only other hit.

“We didn’t get many,” Mauch said after the game, “but a couple were beauties.”

Mauch also admired the Candelaria performance.

“Candy’s arm was killing him from the start,” the manager said. “He told us that his elbow invariably tightens up after pitching in cold weather (as he did Monday night in Kansas City). He really showed me something. He gave us what we wanted.”

Candelaria provided five shutout innings, forcing the Rangers to strand eight. Texas got a run off Stewart Cliburn in the seventh, but Donnie Moore pitched two shutout innings for his 31st save--and perhaps his last as an Angel, since he is eligible for free agency.

A pensive mood pervaded the clubhouse. All the Angels could do now was wait. A few reporters gathered around DeCinces, who said he objected to the media and fan contention that the Angels had folded.

“I don’t accept that,” he said. “Every game in Kansas City (in which the Royals took three of four from the Angels) was a great game. Every game could have gone either way. It’s not easy to play a four-game series there at the end of the season.”

Said Candelaria, who was 7-3 as an Angel, providing the anticipated stability: “We knew what we had to do before we came on the road, and we didn’t do it. Therefore, it’s our fault. I haven’t been here that long, but if Kansas City wins it, I’ll have to feel they were the best team.

“We’ve had our chances.”

Angel Notes

Gene Mauch has had it with the continuing complaints by his players regarding the schedule and the fact that the Angels always seem to end the season on the road, including a pivotal series at Kansas City. “That’s all I’ve heard for the last week,” Mauch said. “How terrible to play the last 10 on the road. Either you handle it or you don’t. We knew what the schedule was when we got up last winter.” . . . Said Kansas City Manager Dick Howser: “They’re (the Angels) screaming about ending the season on the road, but the way they open the season (with a majority of home games) works to their advantage. They get to set up their pitching. They don’t have to worry about the weather. When you start blaming the schedule, day games after night games, stuff like that, you’re looking for excuses.” . . . The scheduling committee’s senior executive? Red Patterson of the Angels. . . . The two RBIs by Reggie Jackson Saturday gave him a career total of 1,601. He’s 16th on the all-time list. . . . The Angels are batting .194 (25 for 129) over the last four games.