Kingdome Takes Turn for Worse for Angels

And on the second day, the Kingdome grew wild again.

Don Sutton had tamed the not-so-spacious indoors for one afternoon, at least, holding the Seattle Mariners homerless long enough to give the Angels a victory in the opener of a three-game series. But this sort of thing doesn’t usually last for long.

Saturday night, the Angels sent their best pitcher of late, Kirk McCaskill, into the shooting gallery, and sure enough, McCaskill’s number came up. Big time, too--with the Mariners crashing three home runs in four-plus innings against McCaskill and cashing them in for a 7-3 victory before a crowd of 16,447.

McCaskill had been the American League’s hottest pitcher during July, going 4-1 with a 1.64 earned-run average. But that record, it should be noted, was fashioned outside, where the grass grows and the wind blows.

Inside and under a roof, which used to be the setting for McCaskill’s hockey days, the Mariners body-checked the 25-year-old right-hander hard into the boards. Alvin Davis hit a solo home run in the third inning, Ken Phelps hit a three-run home run in the fourth inning and Jim Presley hit another three-run home run in the fifth inning.

“All three were bad pitches,” McCaskill said. “It was just not a day when I was going to get away with mistakes.”

Not in the Kingdome. Not with this park’s pawn-sized dimensions.

Hit a ball 320 feet here and you’re king for a day.

McCaskill (12-7) never made another pitch after Presley drove the ball down the the right-field line. He left without retiring a batter in the the fifth inning, trailing 7-2, having allowed seven earned runs on seven hits.

The fifth inning did the final damage, but both McCaskill and Angel Manager Gene Mauch thought the critical inning was the third--when McCaskill got into a quick jam, got two quick outs, then gave up Phelps’ three-run homer. That turned a 1-0 Seattle lead into a 4-0 advantage.

“I think if he could’ve wiggled out of the third inning,” Mauch said, “he could’ve wiggled out of the whole thing.”

Said McCaskill: “I thought if I could have held us in the game there, we would have won because of the tempo being established. If I had pitched just a bad game, we would have won. But this was disastrous.”

Harold Reynolds led off the bottom of the third with the sloppiest breed of artificial turf single--skidding the ball off the glove of a diving Wally Joyner and deflecting it to second baseman Bobby Grich, whose throw to McCaskill, covering, had no chance.

McCaskill then complicated matters with a wild pickoff throw. The ball got away from Joyner and enabled Reynolds to advance all the way to third.

At that point, Mauch saw fit to have a talk with his pitcher, just to settle him down. For two batters, it seemed to work, with McCaskill striking out John Moses and getting Phil Bradley to ground to shortstop.

But then McCaskill let Presley get away--walking him--and completely lost Phelps over the right-field fence.

Two innings later, Presley matched that shot with another three-run home run as the game slipped out of hand.

It was a trying night for pitchers all around, as it often is here. Although the Angels managed just four hits, Seattle had to go through three pitchers of its own to seal the victory.

Starter Mike Moore didn’t make it out of the fourth inning, giving the decision to middle reliever Mark Huismann (3-3), who pitched through the seventh before yielding to Matt Young.

The Angels drove Moore out of the game with two walks and two singles. Jack Howell and Ruppert Jones, who walked, scored on successive singles by Gary Pettis and Dick Schofield. That wilted a 4-0 Mariner lead to 4-2 and brought on Huismann.

Huismann retired the side without further damage, although not without a historic footnote. After Bob Boone flied to right field for the first out, Pettis and Schofield successfully executed a double steal. Pettis slid into third base for the 140th stolen base of his career, breaking Sandy Alomar’s Angel record.

Aside from that and Schofield’s next at-bat, which produced his ninth home run of the season, Angel highlights were limited to the fact that the second-place Texas Rangers also lost, keeping the Angels’ advantage in the American League West at three games.

McCaskill, who had won 8 of his last 10 decisions, allowed just 8 home runs in his first 21 starts. That total reached double figures in a hurry Saturday night.

“I thought I had decent stuff going in. I just didn’t get better,” McCaskill said. “When the situations arose where I needed to be better, I wasn’t. I didn’t do the job from the second inning through the fifth.”

Mauch said he would enter this one under the One-of-Those-Nights file.

“He just wasn’t sharp, that’s all,” he said. “I never had a pitcher go out 35 times and be sharp 30 of them.”

McCaskill, too, said he had similar expectations.

“I didn’t expect to go through the rest of the season without another bad game,” he said.

Not when the Kingdome awaits as one of the stops along the way.

Angel Notes What will it take to win the AL West? Gene Mauch has set the figure at 90 victories, which seems a relatively low total until one takes into account the contenders. Mauch’s Angels are one of only two teams in the division playing better-than-.500 baseball. “If we win 90 games, that’ll do it, because I don’t believe anybody else will,” Mauch said. “I’ve been wrong before, but I think 90 will get the job done.” . . . Gary Pettis knows Sandy Alomar, the man he surpassed as the Angels’ all-time leading base stealer, but only as a rooting-against interest from his boyhood. “I remember him,” Pettis said, “but I grew up on the Oakland A’s side of town.” He called Alomar’s 139 stolen bases a record definitely made to be broken. “I thought I could get it if I played any length of time,” Pettis said. “It was not a very high number to achieve. The Angels have never really had a guy they depended on for stolen bases.” . . . In a somewhat less significant bit of base-running, Doug DeCinces stole second base during the third inning. It was DeCinces’ first stolen base since last Aug. 16.

Brian Downing has resumed his in-season weight-training program after laying off the barbells for nearly the first four months of the season. “I was getting a little tired and thought it would help,” Downing said, “but the biggest thing is what I guess you’d call ‘my work ethic.’ The way I work in the weight room carries over to here. Some guys listen to music. Lifting weights is my release, so I don’t fret over the things that go wrong on the field.” Downing had trained year-around for the last five seasons but quit during the 1985 off-season because, he says, “It was starting to get boring. But after a while, it gets to where you need to replenish the energy again.” . . . Add Downing: He ranks as one of baseball’s pre-eminent weightlifters, but he has yet to appear in any health spa or training club advertisements. “Not in my present state,” Downing said with a laugh. “Maybe if they’d have asked me 20 pounds and a couple of years ago.”

Donnie Moore, on the recent success of the Angel pitching staff: “We have only one guy on the disabled list (Terry Forster). When’s the last time that happened here? I don’t think it’s been like that in years.” . . . Ruppert Jones broke, in more ways than one, a 1-for-32 drought in the second inning with a bat-splintering single off Mike Moore. The bat broke in three pieces, but the ball landed safely in shallow center field. . . . Ray Chadwick makes his second major league start today at 1:35 p.m. against Seattle’s Jerry Reed (4-0).