Petry Left Out in Cold in Battle of Three-Hitters : Against Brewers’ Higuera, Angels Get Nothing but Their Sixth Straight Loss

MILWAUKEE--Chili Davis was chatting with Henry Aaron before the old-timers’ exhibition that preceded Saturday night’s Angels-Milwaukee Brewers game when the home run king passed on a piece of advice to the struggling Angels.

“The most important thing in this game is to relax,” Aaron said. “Maybe in football you can get way up for one game a week, but when you play every day, you have to be able to relax.”

Relax? How about slipping into a coma? The Angels are barely breathing these days and, like zombies in uniform, they sleepwalked their way to their sixth straight loss Saturday night, wasting a great pitching performance by Dan Petry in the process.

The Brewers sent the Angels down to their 11th defeat in their last 13 games with a 1-0 victory in front of 43,287 at County Stadium. Of course, that is hardly big news. Take a look at the American League standings today. The Angels have a larger number in the games-behind column (19 1/2) than they do in the win column (19).

After Friday night’s loss, Angel Manager Cookie Rojas let out a season’s worth of frustrations during a 20-minute postgame tantrum. The Angels responded as if he’d sung them a lullaby.

They managed just three singles and advanced just two runners to second base. The Brewers also had three hits, but all came in the sixth inning and shortstop Ernest Riles’ first home run of the year, a 405-foot shot to center, was all Teddy Higuera needed. Higuera, who had been suffering from back spasms recently, was feeling much better two hours after his first pitch Saturday night. His record is 5-3 and his earned-run average is down to 2.25.

“Higuera pitched well, but I think our man pitched better,” Rojas said. “Petry had one of the best performances I’ve seen all year. We got great pitching, we played good defense, but we just couldn’t generate any offense. It hurts to see him pitch that well and not get any help.”

It wasn’t the first time. Petry’s only other complete game of the season was a 1-0 loss to Detroit and Jack Morris on May 4. This loss might have been even harder to swallow. He had a no-hitter through 5 innings.

Riles hit his homer with one out in the sixth. One out later, Paul Molitor singled to center. B.J. Surhoff followed with a single to right, but Petry got Robin Yount on a grounder to first to end the inning.

“I had pretty good stuff--I don’t know what no-hit stuff is because I’ve never thrown a no-hitter--but I did pretty much what I wanted to do,” Petry said. “The pitch to Riles was a little up, but you can’t judge an outing on one pitch when you throw more than 100. He could of swung through that one, and there were other mistakes tonight that weren’t hit.”

Petry admitted that it was a tough loss, but he refused to blame his teammates for a lack of support.

“I’m sure (Higuera) has shut out other teams before,” he said, “and he was really nasty tonight. If this were the National League and I had to bat, I don’t think I could have hit him.”

Petry, of course, isn’t paid to hit. And lately, the Angels who are haven’t done much better than half the pitchers in the senior circuit.

The Angels did have two chances to get to the Brewer left-hander, though. Tony Armas singled to center leading off the sixth and was sacrificed to second by Darrell Miller. But third baseman Joe Redfield, making his major league debut, and Dick Schofield both flied to right.

With two out in the ninth, Schofield singled to right and Johnny Ray drew a walk. But Brian Downing hit a lazy pop fly to left to end the game.

“I just choked, that’s all there is to it,” Downing said. “I wanted to be up there. . . . I used to be good at that. I looked for one pitch in one spot and I got it, but I just didn’t do anything with it.

“Many times, a hit like that, if I had done it, would be the kind of thing that can turn a team around. But I choked.”

The Angel woes this season can hardly be traced to a single missed opportunity. They have discovered a plethora of ways to lose this year. The formula on this particular evening was great pitching, good defense and nonexistent offense.

“We can’t be thinking about how frustrating things have been so far,” Petry said. “We’ve got to come out every day and play. We can’t be worrying about what’s happened in the first 50-plus games. We still have to come out and play more than 100 more.”

Now that’s a scary thought.

Angel Notes

Kirk McCaskill, who had been listed as Saturday night’s starter by the Angels, will pitch today instead. Manager Cookie Rojas said that the decision to switch the rotation was made after McCaskill was hit on the forearm by a line drive last Sunday in Anaheim Stadium, and the problem was just a lack of communication with the public relations department. “It’s been set up that way since Kirk was hit on the arm,” Rojas said. “With the off day last Wednesday, (Dan) Petry was able to pitch with the normal number days of rest and Kirk could get one more day of rest. But there’s no problem with him. He feels fine. He threw the other day and showed no ill effects.” . . . Darrell Miller, who was called up from the Angels’ triple-A affiliate in Edmonton May 27 to replace catcher Butch Wynegar, said the last few weeks with the Trappers restored his confidence in his ability as a player. “I wasn’t playing much for a while down there, which I didn’t understand, and I had a long talk with my wife,” Miller said. “Sometimes, when life is throwing you a lot of curveballs, you have to get down on your knees and thank God, anyway. I decided I was just going to have fun.” Miller caught 10 games at Edmonton, played the outfield in 18 and first base in 6. He hit .317 with 4 home runs and 19 runs batted in. “The last three weeks I was there, I was playing all over and playing every day,” he said. “It was good to find out I can still play.” Miller, who made his second start with the Angels Saturday night, has two hits in seven at-bats with the Angels. . . . Television commentator Joe Torre, who covers the Angels for KTLA, had a double off the top of the left-field wall during Saturday night’s old-timers’ game. Dick Schofield, father of the Angel shortstop, was 2 for 2, both singles. The game between Torre’s all-star team and Schofield’s Brewer old-timers ended in a 4-4 tie.