Ray Provides Spark, but Angels Still Fizzle : Baseball: Second baseman gets two hits and scores three runs in a 7-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners.

He was their Ray of hope, and of sunshine. On a dim opening night, Johnny Ray was a point of light for the Angels--one of far too few.

The Angels managed only five hits in a 7-4 loss to Seattle at Anaheim Stadium.

Ray had two.

They scored four runs.

Ray scored three, and the one he didn’t score, he drove in with a sacrifice fly.

The Angels’ season at the plate began with a strikeout by Devon White. Up stepped Ray, who drove the second pitch over the right-center field wall for a homer.

Ray shrugged it off. Nothing special.

“After being in the league for nine years, the fun and excitement part of opening day isn’t there,” Ray said. “It’s part of what you do for a living.”

Ray began this season as he has no other with the Angels. In the past, he battled Mark McLemore for the starting job at second base. He has spent time in left field, and last season, he spent much of April on the disabled list with a sprained wrist. McLemore replaced him.

This year, training camp opened with Manager Doug Rader making a pronouncement: Second belonged to Johnny Ray.

“It seems kind of funny,” Ray said. “Ever since I’ve been here, there’s always been some kind of controversy between me and Mark McLemore.”

Ray’s stint on the disabled list from April 6 to April 21 last year was the first of his career.

He missed 16 of the Angels’ first 18 games, breaking a seven-year streak in which he missed no more than 12 games a season.

That was a streak he was proud of.

“Longevity in a season, 162 games and being out there 150, shows you go out there and play, sometimes with nagging aches and pains,” he said.

But Ray said he learned there are times when that is not a virtue.

In 1986 with Pittsburgh, Ray said he played for two months despite a hamstring injury.

The next year, he was traded to the Angels in August.

“The front office, management people started saying I couldn’t play,” Ray said. “That got me upset, to be labeled like that, knowing I was playing hurt.”

It was his range at second base that has been criticized, and still is.

“I hear it around here,” he said.

His speed is criticized as well. His six stolen bases last year were his most since he stole 13 in 1985. Above his locker, someone has scribbled, “I want to steal.”

“Not me,” Ray said. “But I can pick my spots.”

The thing that has kept Ray in the lineup, and McLemore out of it, is his bat. He led the Angels with a .289 average last season, and he certainly led them Monday night.

In the third, the Angels loaded the bases with no outs on a single by third baseman Rick Schu and two walks. Ray drove in the Angels’ second run with a fly to center field.

By the time Ray came to the plate again, the Angels’ 2-0 lead was gone, courtesy of the Mariners’ five-run fifth. Ray led off the sixth with a walk, and went to third on Wally Joyner’s single and a Mariner error. He scored on a groundout by Chili Davis.

Ray had one more at-bat--and the Angels’ scored one more run. He singled with one out in the eighth, going to second on a balk and scoring when pitcher Bill Swift missed the toss from first baseman Pete O’Brien on Joyner’s grounder.

Ray said he felt comfortable.

“I think spring training truly might have been a little long to begin with,” he said. “You come to camp and you’re ready to go. You feel good. But after a while, six or seven games, it gets a little boring and you really have to push yourself, mentally and physically, to go out and work for four or five innings.”

Now, of course, the work is for real.

“You want to be comfortable, but you’re really only comfortable when you win,” he said.