Spring Growing Chilly for Angels

Remember those charmed days of April and May when every Angel ground ball seemed to find a hole, when the Angels won games they had no business winning, when the sun shone brightly and the wind was always at the Angels’ backs?

Well, things are starting to even up.

The rain that fell on the Angels Sunday afternoon at Royals Stadium provided a fitting backdrop for what was happening to them on the field.

By the time the 5-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals was complete, former Angel catcher Bob Boone would unload a three-run home run, Devon White would fail to catch a playable fly, pitchers named Terry Leach and Jeff Montgomery would shut out the Angels for five innings and the Royals would sweep the Angels in Kansas City for the first time in seven years.

You don’t need a weatherman to tell know which way the Angels are going. Sunday’s defeat was the Angels’ fourth consecutive loss, their longest losing streak of the season, and left them 3-6 in June.

The first Angel slump of 1989 is upon them.

“I think a lot of people have been looking at us closely,” Angel Manager Doug Rader said, “and one of the tests that needs to be passed is what we’re going through now.

“A lot of things can be learned by this. How much resiliency we have. How much patience I have as a manager. . . .

“Right now, it’s vitally important for us to remember we’re a very good ballclub, that we can right the ship.”

Boone, who used to captain that ship, helped sabotage it Sunday. His home run against relief pitcher Rich Monteleone capped a sixth inning of self-destruction for the Angels, turning a 3-2 Royal deficit into a 5-3 Royal lead.

The inning began with Jim Abbott (5-4) pitching to Bo Jackson. Jackson drove the ball to deep center field, where the Gold-Gloved White hangs out, and watched the ball sail over White’s head. The ball bounced off the base of the fence--White often pulls down balls over the fence--and by the time White could regain his bearings, Jackson was sprinting into third.

A ground out by Pat Tabler scored Jackson and the Angels’ lead was cut to 3-2.

Then Danny Tartabull and Jim Eisenreich singled to knock Abbott out of the game and bring on the Monteleone-Boone encounter. Monteleone, recalled five days earlier from triple-A Edmonton, worked the count to 3-1, shook off catcher Lance Parrish’s request for a slider and tried to sneak an inside fastball past Boone.

The Angels should have gone with Parrish’s first thought. Inside fastballs can be sneaked by Boone--he hadn’t hit a home run since last Aug. 28--but this one was so fat, Boone looked more like Bo when he turned on it.

Deadpan, Kansas City Manager John Wathan said he saw it coming all along.

“Sure, you bet,” he said. “He gets one every year, doesn’t he?”

Boone turned to Wathan when he returned to the bench and told him, “Good. I got that out of the way for this year. Now I can relax.”

Boone’s home run was his seventh hit in 18 at-bats against his former teammates. A point is being made here, in case the Angels didn’t understand the message Boone sent them last winter when he jumped to the Royals for an $883,001 contract--one dollar more than what the Angels paid him in 1988.

“I think it’s fun to play against your old team,” Boone said. “For that individual, I think it’s like a playoff atmosphere.”

Boone is batting .284, contrasting with the .246 mark owned by his successor, Parrish. Boone also has 16 RBIs, seven doubles, a .350 on-base percentage, even a stand-up triple.

And now, he has his home run.

Asked if this one, coming against the team he felt no longer wanted him, was special, Boone smiled.

“For me, any time I hit a home run is kind of special,” he said. “When I hit a home run, it’s just an accident.”

Accidents are breaking out all over around the Angels these days. Kirk McCaskill suffers a rare early inning blowup on Friday. Greg Minton serves up his first home run in 364 days on Saturday. Boone clears the fence on Sunday.

“When you go through one of these things,” Rader said, “these are the sort of things that happen to you. Our bullpen has given up home runs the last two (games), which is uncharacteristic. The vast majority of our lineup is not producing well, which is also part of the equation.

“That’s why you go bad. It’s no big mystery. Every club goes through it and it’s our time to go through it now.”

With the exception of Wally Joyner, who had his first four-hit game since 1987, and Claudell Washington, who had two singles and two runs, the Angel lineup produced little. After scoring three runs in three innings against Kansas City starter Floyd Bannister, the Angels managed only three hits in five innings against Leach and Montgomery.

That was enough to position Steve Farr for his second save in as many days. Farr pitched the ninth inning for the Royals, yielding a leadoff double to Jack Howell but nothing more.

As soon as Farr struck out Washington and Johnny Ray to end the game, the Angels found themselves staring at an 0-3 start to this trip--and dim prospects for the immediate future. Tonight, struggling Mike Witt opens a three-game series in Texas. Then, on Tuesday, the struggling Angel offense will face Nolan Ryan.

Nobody ever said it was going to be easy.

Angel Notes

While Jim Abbott was working on a 3-1 lead in the fourth inning, reserve catcher Bill Schroeder was flat on his stomach, crawling under the Angel bench to surprise Angel physical therapist Roger Williams with a hot foot. Television viewers were able to catch Schroeder in the act. When Chili Davis crashed into the left-field fence to take an extra-base hit away from Danny Tartabull, the cameras panned the Angel dugout for Manager Doug Rader’s reaction. There, right under Rader’s seat on the bench, was Schroeder. “I think he might’ve lost a contact lens,” Rader quipped. Schroeder was asked if he had considered lighting Rader’s laces while he was down there. “Oh, no,” Schroeder said. “You never light up people in the game. And that includes the manager.”

Rader tried to downplay Devon White’s miss of the Bo Jackson fly that triggered Kansas City’s four-run sixth inning. “The way the ball was carrying in the rain, it was hard to tell,” Rader said. “The ball Jack (Howell) hit (for a ninth-inning double), you could’ve asked the same question: Should (Jim) Eisenreich have caught it? I don’t think it’s fair to comment when you’re 400 feet away.” . . . Shoulder tendinitis forced Abbott to miss one start, making this his first appearance in 12 days. Abbott pitched 5 1/3 innings, giving up six hits and three walks. Abbott said the shoulder felt fine, but that the layoff affected the sharpness of his pitches. “That wasn’t one of my better starts, obviously,” he said. “I didn’t make good pitches and was putting runners on base every inning. That’s going to catch up with you and in the sixth inning, and it did.”

(Orange County Edition) * ANGELS TURN TO WITT

Mike Witt, embroiled in a slump himself, gets the call tonight against Texas to try and end the Angels’ slide. Gene Wojciechowski’s column, Page 4.