Tiger Doesn’t Respect His Angel Elder, 6-2

Between them, Jack Morris and Bert Blyleven have 466 victories, 5,492 strikeouts and 7,684 major league innings pitched.

“He’s got me by a few hundred (innings), maybe a thousand or so,” Morris said of Blyleven, who is four years his senior at 39.

The edge in victories, innings pitched and strikeouts goes to Blyleven, but their matchup Saturday was won by Morris, who was baseball’s top winner in the 1980s with 162 victories. Morris earned his sixth victory of the ‘90s when Detroit beat the Angels, 6-2, the fourth consecutive victory for Morris and the Tigers.

“He looked like the Jack Morris I’ve always seen and have been used to seeing,” said Angel catcher Lance Parrish, once Morris’ Tiger batterymate. “He had everything. My first time up was a perfect example: he threw a good forkball, a good slider and a fastball right on the black, outside. Boom, boom, boom. You make pitches like that all day, you should expect to have a good day. And he did.”

That it was good enough for Morris (6-7) to record his 189th career victory mattered more than its aesthetics. He gave up a leadoff single and a walk in the first inning before being rescued by a double play and a groundout. Another groundout, by Devon White, got him out of trouble in the second after Morris hit Brian Downing, walked Dick Schofield and made a wild pitch that moved Downing to third.

“It wasn’t pretty, but it was a win,” said Morris, who had lost six consecutive games before his recent success. “I battled. It seemed like I was always pitching out of the stretch because there were runners on base. But I was able to make the pitches I wanted, and Mike Henneman did the job to finish.”

Blyleven (6-4) didn’t stick around Tiger Stadium to explain the five-inning, five-run struggle that kept him from getting his 278th victory. The loss ended a personal five-game winning streak and extended the Angels’ losing streak to three, their longest since a four-game drought May 9-12. They slipped to 31-32, their first time under .500 since they were 26-27 June 5.

Just in case his effort didn’t speak for itself, Blyleven left behind a handwritten note, affixed to his locker with adhesive tape.

It read:

Dearest media,

I STUNK TODAY.

Bert Blyleven.

P.S.--The weather was nice.

It’s always fair weather for Tiger Manager Sparky Anderson. After a 103-loss season in 1989 that was one short of the club record for defeats, Anderson is ecstatic about the Tigers’ 31-33 record.

“I said if we came anywhere near .500, if we were even 20 away, I’d be hysterical,” Anderson said. “When you lose 100 games and every magazine that comes out before spring training picked you to be the worst team, you have to be hysterical to be two under .500.”

Angel Manager Doug Rader certainly wasn’t hysterical about being under .500. He was frustrated by his club’s stall--two hits Friday and only two runs Saturday.

“We needed to get something going early and we didn’t,” Rader said. “At one point, it was 15 innings where we had two runs and seven hits. That’s obviously not appropriate and not enough. Over the last three ballgames we’ve been a little flat. . . . We came in here and face a ballclub that’s playing its best baseball of the year, and offensively, we’re just not getting things done.”

Although the Angels failed to get to Morris in the first, the Tigers scored twice against Blyleven in their half of the inning, an ominous sign. In yielding consecutive singles to Lou Whitaker and Tony Phillips, a run-scoring double to Alan Trammell and a warning-track sacrifice fly to Cecil Fielder, Blyleven repeated a pattern he followed early this season, when he allowed 10 runs in the first inning of his four starts and came out with two losses and two no-decisions. In his next nine starts he gave up only one first-inning run and was 6-1 with two no-decisions.

“I don’t know if he was zeroed in at all today,” Parrish said of Blyleven. “He was having trouble with his control. It seemed like he was behind everybody . . . nothing was really working. His curveball was breaking and his fastball was all right, but it wasn’t going where he wanted. Today was the first day in a long while he didn’t have it together.”

The Tigers scored in the second inning on a single, a walk and a sacrifice fly by Whitaker and twice in the fourth on a home run by catcher Mark Salas, a graduate of Nogales High in La Puente. Scott Bailes gave up the final run in the sixth inning on an RBI single by Scott Lusader.

The Angels scored in the fifth on singles by Schofield, Donnie Hill and Wally Joyner and in the seventh on White’s fifth home run of the season. “If you ask me, he’s got too good of stuff to lose six in a row,” Hill said of Morris. “He had a good forkball and a good fastball. I don’t see him losing anything.”

The Angels wish that were true of them. “It’s hard to explain our offense. We’re just hot and cold,” Parrish said. “I can’t really put a finger on one reason why we can’t seem to keep it together for any length of time. One day we’re hitting everything, the next day we’re not. If I knew the answers, I’d be managing this ballclub.”

Angel Notes

Tiger infielder Cecil Fielder, the major leagues’ home run and RBI leader, owes much of his success to Angel bullpen coach Joe Coleman. Coleman, who has spent time in Japan and worked with Japanese pitchers, was a liaison between the Hanshin Tigers of the Japanese Central League and the Toronto Blue Jays when Fielder was seeking a place to play regularly. Coleman helped make the arrangements, which included investigating Fielder’s character because “you have to make sure the guys you send are quality people on and off the field. The people I talked to all said he was a top-notch kid.”

Coleman might be one of the few not stunned by Fielder’s success with Detroit, which signed him as a free agent in January. “One thing that was a little bit of a surprise was how quick he adjusted in Japan. Historically, it takes two years,” Coleman said of Fielder, who hit .302 with 38 homers and 81 RBIs in 106 games last season. “He had a very good rookie season in Japan, and when I saw that and heard he was coming here to play in a ballpark very similar to Japanese standards, I said he had a chance to put up some numbers.”

Asked how he would pull the Angels out of their offensive slump, Manager Doug Rader said, “persevere . . . and have faith in the people you’re working with.”