Joyner, Howell Deliver as Angels Rout Tigers, 10-3

They used to be roommates, but through the first month of the 1989 baseball season, the only thing Jack Howell and Wally Joyner shared was a batting stroke that belonged on the disabled list.

Entering Thursday night’s game at Anaheim Stadium, Howell owned the American League’s darkest hitting slump--a .100 batting average, with just 6 hits and one run batted in in 60 at-bats.

Joyner, only a little warmer at .205, hadn’t homered since last Sept. 1, a power outage totaling 182 regular-season at-bats.

Together, Howell and Joyner represented a major reason why the Angels, despite astonishingly good starting pitching, were only 11-10 and in fourth place in the AL West standings before their series finale against the Detroit Tigers.

But in the Detroit pitching staff, Howell and Joyner finally found deliverance. Howell had a pair of run-scoring singles, Joyner struck a two-run home run and the Angels defeated Detroit, 10-3, before a crowd of 25,895.

The hits were only three of 14 managed by the Angels--everyone in the Angel lineup had at least one hit--but these three were worthy of headlines.

Howell was hitless in his previous 10 at-bats and had just three hits in 46 at-bats (.065). He had struck out 15 times and hadn’t driven in a run since April 15.

Joyner, meanwhile, was nearing his second full month without a home run. After hitting 20 home runs in the first half of 1986 and 34 during 1987, Joyner had seen his home-run output slow to a drip. He hit only 13 last year and counting a homerless training camp, Joyner hadn’t cleared the fences in 256 at-bats.

But by the fourth inning Thursday, Tiger pitcher Charles Hudson (0-1) was witness to the end of both droughts.

In the second inning, Hudson yielded Howell’s first RBI single and, in the fourth, he surrendered Joyner’s two-run home run to right field. That erased the 3-0 lead Detroit has built on first-inning home runs by Lou Whitaker (with a runner on base) and Alan Trammell.

By the time Howell delivered his second run-scoring single, in the seventh inning off Tiger reliever Ramon Pena, the Angels had scored their ninth of 10 unanswered runs as they made a winner of Bert Blyleven for the third time in four decisions.

Blyleven worked 7 1/3 innings after barely scraping his way out of the first. From the first inning on, Blyleven allowed Detroit only five more singles.

Bob McClure pitched the final 2 2/3 innings for the Angels, limiting the Tigers to a ninth-inning single by Chris Brown.

“Bert persevered,” Angel Manager Doug Rader said. “He didn’t have a real outstanding fastball early and tried to throw a couple by some people. That didn’t work too well.

“But he made some nice adjustments, some experienced mid-course corrections, and started locating the ball much better.”

Howell and Joyner also persevered--and for Rader, that was the best news of the night.

“It’s nice to see Howell get a couple of hits,” said Rader, who watched a three-week slump take virtually all the aggressiveness out of Howell’s swing. “As soon as Jack lets the bat head go, he’ll be fine.”

And Joyner?

“The home run took away a burden . . . ,” Rader said.

That burden has recently been accompanied by boos at Anaheim Stadium, which only two years earlier was decorated with WALLY WORLD bed-sheet banners in the right-field bleachers.

Such word-of-mouth reviews haven’t gone unnoticed by Joyner.

“I’ve recognized it,” he said of the booing. “They can do what they want. I have to continue to work.”

Joyner cleared the air in the fourth inning by homering with Brian Downing on base, forging a 3-3 tie. An inning later, Claudell Washington, trying to hit behind Kent Anderson on first base, deposited another two-run home run into the right-field seats.

“Nice hit-and-run,” Rader noted. “It went 420 feet.”

The Angels added three more runs in the sixth inning, when they knocked Hudson out of the game.

Joyner began the inning by reaching base on Tiger second baseman’s Lou Whittaker’s error, took third on a double by Lance Parrish and scored on a two-run double by Washington. Howell, who was intentionally walked before Washington, scored on a single by Johnny Ray.

The Angels scored their ninth and 10th runs on Howell’s second RBI single and a run-scoring single by Dante Bichette in the eighth inning.

The 10 runs were two more than the Angels had scored in their previous five games.

“The nature of offense is basically inconsistent,” Rader said. “We have aggressive free swingers and we’re going to go through some periods where we’re not too efficient.

“But when it really gets rolling, it looks like a pretty nice lineup.”

Particularly when Howell and Joyner return from the ranks of missing in action.

Angel Notes

While Dick Schofield is on the disabled list, his replacement, rookie Kent Anderson, continues to carve a niche for himself. Anderson’s play at shortstop--.308 batting average and only one error in nine games--has been enough to make the Angel coaching staff reconsider its original plan of opening the season with Glenn Hoffman as the club’s lone utility infielder. Another name to consider in the two-utilityman scenario, if and when, is Mark McLemore, who has been taking ground balls at third base for about a week. . . . Brian Downing left Thursday night’s game after bruising his right knee while trying to stretch a single into a double in the fifth inning. Downing, out on the play, was replaced by Dante Bichette and is listed on a day-to-day basis.