Angels, Athletics Get Off to Rocky Start When Pitch Goes Astray

The Angels played their first home game of 1988 at Anaheim Stadium Friday night and welcomed their fans with the traditional opening-day trappings. There was plenty of bunting, balloons and pregame ballyhoo.

Then the game began and the party mood evaporated in bad blood and a brawl. This kind of start would have been more appropriate for a hockey opener.

The tune changed when Angel right-hander Kirk McCaskill decided on some new music--the chin variety--and ricocheted a fastball off Oakland first baseman Mark McGwire’s helmet in the fourth inning of the A’s 8-2 victory.

The usual mob scene followed with a few players trying to get a little slam dancing started. A good portion of the 45,586 on hand considered this a rollicking good time, but Oakland Manager Tony La Russa and McGwire failed to find any fun in the situation.

“No, no, no, no ,” La Russa insisted. “It’s not part of the game. He (McCaskill) is a major league pitcher with command, and I don’t think he hit him on purpose, but you just can’t get careless in the area of the head.

“The doc looked at Mark and said he’ll be OK, but there was discoloration and a little blood and that’s a dangerous area, so I took him out.”

McCaskill, who said “it was a sickening feeling” and that the pitch “just got away from me” almost got a fastball past McGwire in the second inning, but with a guy as strong as McGwire, almost isn’t usually good enough. It certainly wasn’t this time, anyway, and last season’s rookie of the year muscled a two-run homer just inside the right-field foul pole.

McCaskill got ahead of McGwire 0-2 in the fourth and then sent up the high hard one. McGwire jumped up, stood a few feet in front of the plate and threw his hands up in the air. After a second, he started walking toward the mound.

By this time, players from both teams were starting to trickle out of the dugouts. When McGwire made his move for the mound, they began to sprint toward the mound. Angel pitcher Mike Witt and former Angel teammate Carney Lansford won the race to the mound and began a relatively tame pushing match.

Oakland first base coach Rene Lachemann, brother of the Angel pitching coach, Marcel, put a bear hug on McGwire and tried to steer him out of harm’s way. Rene Lachemann is 6-feet tall and weighs 200 pounds, but he looked like a child hanging onto his father as the 6-5, 225-pound McGwire made two aborted attempts to get to McCaskill.

“I’m fine, just (angry),” McGwire said. “I had no chance. That pitch was a bee line straight for my skull. If I can turn and take it on the shoulder, that’s one thing, but when the ball leaves seam marks in your helmet, that’s a different story.

“That’s the second time that’s happened to me, and it’s not going to happen again. I don’t care if I get thrown out of a lot of games or fined a lot of money, that’s not going to happen again. Think about it. I don’t have a choice. That’s my head. Whether he did it on purpose or not doesn’t matter. My career could be ended and he’d still be pitching.”

When McGwire was beaned last year, he calmly got up and went to first . . . much to the dismay of his veteran teammates.

“We’ve already got one guy on the disabled list (Glenn Hubbard) because he was hit in the face,” Lansford said. “And look at what happened to Dickie Thon (the former Astro who suffered a career-ending eye injury after being hit in the head). It’s scary. We’re talking about a career here.

“Mark has to decide how to handle this and he knows we’ll be right behind him. We can’t be intimidated.”

So the A’s-Angels American League West rivalry got off on a sour note Friday night.