Angels Beat A’s, Live to Play Some Other Days : Harvey’s Strikeouts Save Win, Slicing Oakland Lead to 1

The sun hasn’t yet set on the Angels this baseball season, although they were less than grateful for it in the top of the ninth inning Sunday afternoon.

Two outs away from their most important victory of the summer, the Angels watched Oakland’s Stan Javier hit a fly ball into that sun . . . and soon were up to their halos in anxiety.

Right fielder Tony Armas couldn’t see the ball. Center fielder Devon White couldn’t catch it.

Just like that, Javier was on third base, representing the tying run, with a couple of pinch-hitters named Jose Canseco and Dave Henderson due to bat.

Another fine mess the Angels had gotten themselves into.

Remarkably, and memorably, they got out of it, too. Angel relief pitcher Bryan Harvey, rearing back and reaching deep, struck out Canseco and Henderson before 60,326 roaring fans at Anaheim Stadium to preserve a 4-3 victory and avoid a sweep at the hands of the first-place Athletics.

Somewhat surprisingly, Angel Manager Doug Rader was breathing normally by the time they opened the clubhouse doors to reporters in the aftermath.

“My cardiologist doesn’t think that’s the greatest scenario to go through on a daily basis,” Rader said.

Echoed 83-year-old coach Jimmie Reese, “I know how he feels. I don’t know how I’ve lived through it all.”

For the Angels, it was a scary ninth inning--and an eerie one. Remember the last time Dave Henderson had a chance to put his team ahead in the top of the ninth inning here? Oakland third base coach Rene Lachemann did, having been in the third-base coaching box for the Boston Red Sox on that fateful day during the 1986 American League playoffs.

“I got chills up and down my spine,” Lachemann said. “I told Javier that this was exactly the way it was with Boston that day.

“A forkball pitcher on the mound. A huge crowd. A day game. It was a Sunday, too.”

Black Sunday, as the Angels remember it. Henderson homered off Donnie Moore that afternoon to help pave the Red Sox path to the World Series, a hit the Angels have never been able to forget.

“He beat me out of a chance at the World Series after 70 years in the game,” Reese said. “How do you forget that?”

Henderson couldn’t. As he stepped in against Harvey, the images of ’86 didn’t escape him.

“It was almost the same crowd figure, the same kind of yelling,” Henderson said.

One difference this time, though.

“He didn’t get it down,” Henderson said, referring to Moore’s pitch selection three years earlier. “He left it up.”

Sunday, Harvey got his forkball down. Henderson swung and missed. The Angels won.

“Lightning can’t strike twice, can it?” Reese said. “ Jiminy Christmas. “

Before Henderson, however, there was Canseco. And before Canseco, there was Javier, whose fly ball into the gap in right-center field made all of this possible.

Armas staggered to record the first out of the inning, squinting into the sun to grab Tony Phillips’ fly to right. Javier’s ball was more difficult, hit between Armas and White--and into Armas’ blind spot.

As Armas backed off on the ball, White, sprinting over to assist, made a last-second lunge at the ball. White got his glove on it, but that’s all, getting charged with an error that enabled Javier to reach third base.

“I knew the trouble Armas had with the first fly ball,” White said. “And (Javier’s) ball went straight up into the sun.

“I went over to help out, but at the last minute, I lost the ball. It hit my glove. I should’ve caught it. No excuses.”

White smiled.

“It just made the game more interesting, that’s all,” he said.

How to complicate your relief pitcher’s life, in one easy step. Suddenly, Harvey was pitching with the tying run on third base . . . and Jose at the bat. Canseco hadn’t played all weekend because of a leg injury, but in this situation--needing a sacrifice fly to tie the game--he loomed as Oakland Manager Tony La Russa’s ultimate pinch-hitter.

Canseco swung at the first pitch he saw, a fastball, and fouled it over the first-base dugout.

He took a second pitch for a ball, evening the count, at 1-1.

He fouled off the third.

Then, Harvey came in with a chest-high forkball. The pitch creased the inside of the plate and left Canseco defenseless. All Canseco could do was watch the ball pop into catcher Lance Parrish’s glove.

Home plate umpire Joe Brinkman called it strike three.

“I knew I had to strike him out there,” Harvey said. “If he hits anything, it’s a run.

“But I knew he’d been sitting for two, three days and he’d had a sore wrist all year. I tried to get inside on him with some fastballs and then come in with the forkball.”

The forkball also awaited Henderson, who went down even quicker than Canseco. Three pitches, three strikes.

Harvey had earned his 17th save. Angel starter Bert Blyleven had earned his 12th victory. Oakland starter Dave Stewart, the winningest pitcher in the American League, had been dealt his seventh defeat.

And the Angels, staring at a potential three-game deficit in the AL West standings, had pulled to within one game of Oakland.

“That one there was very important,” Harvey said. “You look at it and you can play it down. I know we’ve been playing it down, because there’s 46 games to go. But this was a two-game swing. Instead of three down, we’re one down.

“If you can’t make up one game in 46 games, then winning or losing this one probably wouldn’t make a difference for you.”

Or, as Angel left fielder Chili Davis put it:

“Three out or one out. Which one would you choose?” he said. “I know I wouldn’t be standing in line very long.”

Angel Notes

Sending Jose Canseco in to pinch-hit for Walt Weiss with the tying run on third base seemed like the thing to do, but Angel Chili Davis said he was “glad” to see Canseco come to bat in that situation. “He hadn’t played in two or three days, he hadn’t hit against live pitching,” Davis said. “And he’s going against our best reliever. That be like us calling on (injured Brian Downing) to face Dennis Eckersley. I tell you what, I was more content with him batting there than Walt Weiss. Weiss will slap the ball on the ground, put it in play. Jose was going for the pump. And he hadn’t been in a game situation for a while. I felt we got the edge there.”

For 5 1/2 innings, solo home runs by Oakland’s Dave Parker and the Angels’ Tony Armas accounted for the only runs Sunday. But in the bottom of the sixth, Kent Anderson, the rookie filling in at shortstop for injured Dick Schofield, broke the tie with a two-run double off Dave Stewart. Claudell Washington then drove in Anderson with a single, giving the Angels a 4-1 lead. . . . Just before his run-scoring single, Washington swung at a pitch and lost his grip on the bat, sending it flying into the stands. The bat hit a young boy on the arm and was retrieved by an usher, who traded it to Washington for a bat of lesser value, which was given to the boy. On the next pitch, Washington swung Old Faithful and drove in what proved to be the decisive run in the game. Was the bat exchange the key? “It helped,” Angel Manager Doug Rader deadpanned.

The Angels and the A’s drew a total of 175,058 fans to Anaheim Stadium over the weekend, the second-largest crowd for a three-game series in major league history. Only a three-game set between the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Indians on Aug. 6-8, 1948, surpassed it. That series drew 188,081 fans. . . . Add Attendance: Sunday’s crowd left the Angels’ 1989 attendance at 2,010,269, marking the 10th time in the last 11 seasons that the club has eclipsed the two-million mark.

SPEAKING TERMS

Kent Anderson is back on Dick Schofield’s good side. Mike Reilley’s story, Page 11.