Lazorko Falters in 5th, but Angels Win With Fireworks Show on 4th

Jack Lazorko is the Angels’ real-life answer to Crash Davis, although Kevin Costner could never play the role. Bob Hoskins is a closer match, as any recent visit to an Angel game will attest.

The Jack Lazorko story is 11 years of minor league bus rides from Sarasota to Daytona to Asheville to Tulsa to Edmonton, 11 years of pining and plugging and pushing . . . often, disappointment. He’s a good guy, a savvy guy, one who even makes it all the way to The Show --even though he doesn’t have much to show for it.

Take Monday night in Toronto, where Lazorko, 32, made the 14th big league start of his career, looking for his sixth big league victory. It took him only a decade to get the first, but here it is, the bottom of the third inning, and he is already working with a seven-run lead.

This appears to be a break, one of the rare ones, but major league rules require a starting pitcher to complete 5 innings to earn credit for a victory. Lazorko gets stuck on 4. The Angels proceed to an 11-6 victory over the Blue Jays, but Lazorko winds up only with a nice, long shower, still winless as an Angel in 1988, still frustrated after all these years.

“It’s discouraging, no question,” said Lazorko, who entered the fifth inning with a 7-1 advantage that withered to 7-5 before reliever Stewart Cliburn could finish the fifth.

“I felt pretty good out there. I took that lead into the fifth inning and decided to go right at ‘em. They just hit a couple of fly balls--and got them over the fence.”

Two straight, in fact. With one out in the fifth, Lazorko served up an opposite-field home run to Toronto shortstop Tony Fernandez, a line drive over the left-field fence. Two pitches later, same result to Rance Mulliniks: opposite-field home run, line drive to left.

“They were just fly balls,” Lazorko kept saying. “They were outs in any other park.”

But they were out of this one, and Lazorko’s edge was quickly sliced to 7-3. Then, slowly, but ever so surely, came the real agony.

George Bell singled. Kelly Gruber hit a ground-rule double. Fred McGriff walked, loading the bases.

Angel Manager Cookie Rojas aborted the mission there, escorting Lazorko from the mound, just two outs from deliverance.

“Lazorko kind of lost it in that inning,” Rojas said, referring to his control, not the victory. “He was getting his pitches high and he had just walked (McGriff).”

In came Cliburn, who defused the Toronto threat, but not before surrendering a two-run single to Ernie Whitt--tacking two more runs on Lazorko’s earned-run average with his first pitch.

After the 7-1 lead slipped to 7-5, the Angels opened the sixth inning and added another run. They scored two more in the eighth and one more in the ninth, bringing their two-day total to 21. Back-to-back 10-4 and 11-6 victories. With the Angels, it doesn’t happen often.

With Lazorko, it didn’t happen at all.

Chili Davis, who drove in two runs with a double and two singles, is still relatively new to the Angels and wanted to know some background.

“Is Jack a starter or a reliever?” Davis asked a reporter, wondering whether Lazorko was pitching, so to speak, out of position.

Lazorko started 11 games for the Angels in 1987, so he has been there before--although seldom with a 7-0 lead.

“Maybe he relaxed a little,” Davis said. “I don’t think you ever try to do that but as a pitcher, when you get a big lead like that, you probably start thinking, ‘I just don’t want to start walking guys.’ ”

A fairly accurate analysis, Lazorko admitted.

“You shouldn’t relax out there, but you do,” Lazorko said. “I don’t know if relax is the right word, but with a seven-run lead, you try to throw strikes right at the hitter. They know it, too, and sometimes they put the bat on it.”

Lazorko kept replaying those final pitches of the fifth inning in his mind.

“Guys on second and third, with McGriff up,” Lazorko recounted. “I was trying to pitch around McGriff and get out of it on a double-play ball by Whitt.”

Lazorko pitched around McGriff, all right, but wasn’t around to pitch to Whitt. Instead, all Lazorko could do was watch Cliburn (3-0) scoop up the victory.

After surrendering Whitt’s single and hitting Sil Campusano with a pitch, Cliburn retired 10 straight Blue Jays before Fernandez and Mulliniks opened the ninth with back-to-back singles. This prompted Rojas to change pitchers again, replacing Cliburn with Donnie Moore.

Moore got a quick groundout, then yielded a run-scoring single to Gruber before getting McGriff to hit into a game-ending double play.

The victory gave the Angels a 36-45 record at the season’s midway point.

Lazorko could console himself with the fact that he’s due for another start this weekend against the Cleveland Indians.

“It’s a team effort and the team won the game, that’s the main thing,” Lazorko said. “I wish I could’ve got the win, but, hey, next time in Cleveland.”

By now, Lazorko is an expert on next times.

Angel Notes

After knocking Detroit’s Jack Morris out of Sunday’s game in the third inning, the Angels came back Monday and did the same to Toronto’s Jim Clancy. Clancy surrendered two runs in both the first and second innings, and when he began the third by yielding a single to Brian Downing and a walk to Chili Davis, Blue Jay Manager Jimy Williams decided enough was enough. Downing and Davis both scored against relief pitcher John Cerutti, leaving Clancy (4-11) responsible for 6 runs in 2-plus innings. The early innings haven’t been kind to Clancy this season. In his 18 starts, Clancy has allowed 20 first-inning runs. “I have seen him have better days,” Angel Manager Cookie Rojas said. “He was hanging his pitches and getting behind in the count a lot.” Added Davis: “I don’t know Clancy that well, but the guys on the bench were telling me, ‘He’s a lot better than that.’ The first hit I got off him (a two-run single in the first inning) broke my bat. That was a break for us. When you’re struggling, those are the breaks that go against you.”

The Angels amassed 15 hits, 3 apiece by Davis and Jack Howell, who was making his first start since bruising his right thumb last Wednesday against Minnesota. Howell doubled off the wall in right-center in his first at-bat and singled in each of his last two plate appearances, finishing 3 for 5. “It’s good to see him come back like that,” Rojas said. “It doesn’t look like he lost any timing by sitting out.” . . . Darrell Miller, meanwhile, could replace Howell on the sidelines after straining ligaments in his right knee while sliding home in the sixth inning. Miller scored on the play but came up limping and had to be replaced in left field by Tony Armas. “It feels funny in there now,” Miller said, holding his knee. “I must have got clipped at the last second, because it gave out as soon as I tried to stand up on it. It’s got some play in it, though, so I’m not sure (how serious it may be). We’ll see what happens tomorrow.” . . . Stewart Cliburn is 3-0 in his role as Angel long reliever, but this may be one reason Rojas seldom uses him as a short reliever: Once Cliburn enters a game, the first batters he faces are a combined 10 for 18 against him, including Ernie Whitt’s two-run single Monday. Of those hits, two are doubles and one is a home run.