Angels Spank Yankees With 9-Run 2nd Inning

For Yankee-haters everywhere, it was a Saturday to savor. The team from New York was being humiliated on national television, and the sweetest moment of all must have come with the realization that, somewhere, George Steinbrenner was also watching.

The Yankee owner has had a great deal to say lately about the “embarrassing” performances turned in by his employees in pin-stripes. So what was running through Steinbrenner’s mind while the Angels scored nine runs on nine hits (seven of them in a row) during the second inning of a 12-0 rout before a crowd of 34,908 at Anaheim Stadium?

Bad thoughts. Unprintable thoughts, probably. Probably the same thoughts he had on May 13, 1979, when the Angels first established club records of nine runs and seven consecutive hits in an inning against New York at Yankee Stadium.

Steinbrenner knows his team’s pitching is suspect. This time around, four Yankee pitchers yielded 17 hits, including 5 doubles and 2 homers. And another error was added to the growing list put together by the Yankees’ shaky defense.

But even those much-feared New York batters came up empty this time. The first four batters in the Yankee lineup are hitting .321, .336, .314 and .330, but Angel rookie right-hander Terry Clark, who came into the game with a less-than-awesome 5.12 earned-run average, limited New York to just seven hits. And he wasn’t pitching around anybody, either.

Yankee fans are beginning to understand the full depth of the phrase “dog days of August.” The Yankees are 8-17 this month, and they were 11-16 in August, 1987. As a result, they are 5 1/2 games behind the American League East-leading Detroit Tigers.

So, while the Yankees waited for the other shoe to drop, Clark kicked off his shoes and fairly beamed about his first major league shutout.

He got it against a team that had roughed him up for seven runs in 3 innings 10 days earlier.

“I’m sure a lot of Yankee fans tuned in today and saw who was pitching for the Angels and said, ‘Who’s that?’ ” Clark said, flashing a broad smile. “I don’t expect a lot of people across the nation to know who I am. Maybe the next time they see my name in a box score, they’ll know.”

Clark, whose 6-2 record is an indication of the offensive support he’s received rather than his domination as a pitcher, said he was as sharp as he has ever been in the first few innings.

“Every pitch I was throwing, even the breaking balls and changeups, was right on,” he said. “Then you get the big lead and say to yourself, ‘Just throw it down the middle,’ and you can’t. But I regained my concentration after the third and fourth innings.”

The Yankees had a pair of baserunners in the third, fourth and fifth innings, but Clark seemed to get stronger as the game wore on.

“I said this winter he could pitch in the big leagues,” said Angel Manager Cookie Rojas, who managed Clark at La Romana in the Dominican Republic winter league. “This was the best performance of his career. Once he gets in a groove, he doesn’t hurt himself.”

Said Clark: “By the seventh, I wanted the shutout real bad.”

The Yankees just wanted out. Starter Charles Hudson (6-5), who gave up nine runs in 1 innings, summed up his team’s feelings when he said, “There’s only one good thing about this game: It’s over with.”

The Angels took a 1-0 lead in the first inning, thanks to Wally Joyner’s 11th home run.

Then came the fateful second, an inning in which the Angels had yet to score more than two runs this season.

Jack Howell led off the inning with a single to right-center. Thad Bosley singled to left. Tony Armas flied deep to center. Bob Boone’s line single up the middle brought home Howell. Dick Schofield’s bloop single to right scored Bosley. Devon White’s grounder to first took a huge hop over first baseman Don Mattingly’s head for a run-scoring double.

Johnny Ray drove home two more runs with a looping single to center. Joyner’s double to left and second baseman Luis Aguayo’s error allowed Ray to cross the plate with run No. 7. Brian Downing’s single to left chased Hudson, and Howell greeted reliever Ron Guidry with a two-run homer into the Angels’ bullpen in right.

“It can’t get any worse than that,” said Hudson, who gave up five runs in a 2-inning stint against Oakland last week after spending almost a month on the disabled list with tendinitis in his right shoulder. “Last time (against the Athletics), I walked everybody. This time, I threw strikes and they hit them. Who knows, maybe I’ll throw a no-hitter next time.”

Sorry, Charlie, but there may not be a next time.

“There’s a good possibility that Guidry will start in Hudson’s spot next time,” Yankee Manager Lou Piniella said. “Anybody who gives us a quality start now is a big plus. It makes it too damn difficult to be in a pennant race and try to find starting pitchers.”

Yankee haters, take heart. A few more games such as this one, and they won’t be in a pennant race.

Angel Notes

The Yankee dugout was getting on Terry Clark for not throwing enough fastballs with a 10-0 lead, but veteran catcher Bob Boone just laughed and called for more changeups. “I don’t change the game plan according to the score . . . ever,” Boone said. “You’ve got to make your pitcher keep pitching. The name of the game is tricking the hitters and, unless you’re Sandy Koufax, you have to change direction and speed. I let the score help the pitcher. I let the score set up the changeup. They’re expecting more fastballs, and he’s throwing changeups for strikes.” . . . Was Yankee Manager Lou Piniella impressed with Clark? Not exactly. “I give Clark credit, but pitching with a 10-run lead after two innings isn’t too tough a chore.” . . . The nine-run second was the Angels’ biggest inning of the season. And the nine runs and nine hits were the most the Yankees have allowed in an inning this year.

Wally Joyner has a cameo spot as a pitcher in the film “Stealing Home,” which stars Mark Harmon and Jodie Foster and opened nationwide this weekend, but he was all hitter Saturday. Joyner, who has 9 hits in his last 16 at-bats to raise his average to .298, had a home run and a double in four at-bats. His first-inning homer was only his fourth of the year at Anaheim Stadium and his first at home since July 27, when he hit two off Oakland’s Todd Burns. Last season, Joyner hit 19 of his 34 home runs at home.