THE WORLD SERIES : OAKLAND ATHLETICS vs. SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS : Oh, Those A’s! They Lead, 3 to 0 : Game 3: Oakland hits a record-tying five home runs and beats Giants, 13-7, to move to within one victory of a sweep.

In the beginning, it was not so much a World Series game as a welcome-back party.

In a step toward recovering from the Oct. 17 earthquake, the 62,038 fans at Candlestick Park Friday arrived early, shook hands, and then sang and danced in celebration of life and their San Francisco Giants.

The Oakland Athletics, on the other hand, arrived late, and played catch throughout the pregame ceremonies.

Then they threw out their chests, challenging, intimidating and ultimately dismantling the Giants with a record-tying five home runs en route to a 13-7 Game 3 victory.

“Before the game I told (winning pitcher pitcher Dave) Stewart that we were going to get 10 runs,” A’s outfielder Rickey Henderson said afterward. “OK, so we didn’t get 10.”

What might be one of history’s best Series teams has taken a historically insurmountable three-games-to-none lead. In the 85 previous Series, no team has come back from such a deficit to win.

The A’s could wash their hands of the Giants and celebrate their first World Series title since 1974 as soon as tonight.

In Game 4, which begins at 5:30, Oakland will have Mike Moore, who already has one Series win, facing Don Robinson, who, despite a sore right knee, will be making his first postseason start.

It would be the first Series sweep since the Cincinnati Reds defeated the New York Yankees in four games in 1976.

Said Rickey Henderson: “I hope we get it in four. If we don’t, we feel for sure we will get it by Sunday. No way is this team going to beat us in four straight.”

That would appear to be a fair assessment.

Dave Henderson had two homers Friday night, doing an arms-down dance around the bases after each. He missed hitting a third by one inch when his first-inning blast to right hit the top of the fence.

Jose Canseco, who screamed at pitcher Scott Garrelts in the first inning after a high inside pitch, homered in the fifth inning.

Carney Lansford homered in the sixth and tied a Series record with four runs scored.

Rickey Henderson, while he didn’t homer, might have caused a homer by dancing off second base for about five minutes in the fifth inning. It distracted pitcher Kelly Downs enough that he threw Canseco a hanging slider down the middle, which Canseco lined over the left-field fence.

Stewart pitched seven good innings and won his second Series game. He finished strong. Of his 90 pitches, he needed just 29 to get through his last three innings.

The Giants had a four-run ninth inning, highlighted by a three-run homer from seldomly used pinch-hitter Bill Bathe and an RBI single by reserve Greg Litton.

But the main thing accomplished in the ninth was the setting of a Series record of seven total homers in game. Matt Williams hit the Giants’ other homer in the second.

The Giants have been outscored 23-8, outhit 32-19, and have a team batting average of .199and a team earned-run average of 7.92.

This is a team that now wishes this were delayed longer than a record 10 days because of the earthquake. Delayed, maybe, until spring?

“It would have to be a long, long delay,” Oakland outfielder Dave Parker said. “This team could come back two months from now and look just as good.”

“All of a sudden,” Giant slugger Will Clark said, “we’re at the end of our line.”

The A’s, in what was perceived by some Giants as an insult, haughtily skipped town earlier this week to train for two days in Phoenix.

“That might have made a difference,” Rickey Henderson said. “We got there and didn’t have to worry about anything.”

The Giants perhaps perceived another insult before Friday’s game, when the A’s disregarded all traffic reports and didn’t leave their Oakland Coliseum until 1:30 p.m.

A normal 45-minute trip took them as long as a flight from here to Phoenix--1 hour 40 minutes--and their buses arrived at Candlestick just three minutes before the scheduled 3:25 p.m. start of their batting practice.

So the A’s were forced to skip infield practice, and then they played catch in front of their dugout while the fans emotionally sang the city’s anthem “San Francisco” and then applauded city rescue workers and service organizations for their assistance last week.

Once the game got under way, the fans struck back, starting with Canseco.

“There was this 60-year-old lady up in the stands who was shouting all kinds of insults at me, right from the beginning,” said Canseco, who entered the game hitless in his previous 23 Series at-bats. “That really irritated me, and got my blood going.”

That blood boiled in the first inning, when Garrelts second pitch to Canseco nearly beaned him. After jerking his head out of the way at the last minute, Canseco screamed a curse word at Garrelts . . . and then singled to left field to break his streak.

“That woke me up,” Canseco said. “That woke all of us up.”

Dave Henderson delivered the first big blast with his first-inning, two-run double off the top of the right-field wall.

“It was the hardest ball I hit all night,” he said.

After the double, Rickey Henderson said Dave returned to the dugout and said, “I’m feeling good tonight. The ball is carrying.”

Sure enough, after Matt Williams’ homer off Stewart made it 2-1, Dave Henderson and Tony Phillips homered off Garrelts in the fourth.

The Giants countered with two in the bottom of the fourth and could have had more but for the Series top defensive play--a belly-flopping Mark McGwire stop of a Pat Sheridan grounder with two out and runners on first and second.

Sheridan’s shot followed a two-run single by Terry Kennedy, who made Stewart pay for giving up back-to-back singles by Will Clark and Kevin Mitchell and then walking Ken Oberkfell on four itches.

There was a reminder of last week’s earthquake when, in the ninth inning, the lights above the right-center field stands went dark. Fans in that area, followed by fans throughout the stadium, showed their preparedness by pulling out and waving flashlights.

Otherwise, things didn’t look too bright for the Giants Friday night.