Sweet 16 Angels’ Charm : Baseball: After blowing an 8-4 lead, they defeat the Brewers, 9-8, in marathon at Milwaukee.

By the time Dante Bichette’s high chopper scored Dave Winfield with the winning run in the 16th inning, the night was no longer young.

Neither was the winning pitcher. Or most of the principals involved in the decisive play in the Angels’ 9-8 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, which ended at 1:06 a.m. (CDT) Saturday.

Winfield, 38, began things with a ground single into left field off Tom Edens (1-1). Winfield was sacrificed to second by Max Venable, 33, and moved to third by Bill Schroeder, 31. And when Bichette, a youngster at 26, sent Winfield home, it made a winner of Greg Minton, 38, who came off the disabled list earlier in the day after recovering from elbow surgery performed on April 27.

“I can pitch again maybe in September,” joked Minton (1-0), who pitched two hitless innings to earn his first victory in his first appearance since April 17.

“I was kind of worried my name wasn’t going to get called. I was a little nervous and the adrenaline was really flowing. But for 15 years I’ve been able to throw a sinker, and that’s what I threw, although I did mix in one curveball. I haven’t been in there enough to get fancy.”

Bichette, who had been two for six, said he had never faced Edens and was somewhat baffled. “He had a better curveball than I thought. I was lucky,” Bichette said.

Minton never saw Winfield score the winning run. “There were 23 guys on the bench in front of me screaming,” he said, smiling. “By the time I got in there, the bench was punch-drunk. They were leading cheers, screaming, yelling. We were having more fun than I could remember. I was just hoping somebody on my team was sober.”

Angel Manager Doug Rader was sober but exhausted after seeing his team rebound to win a game it had led, 8-4, going to the bottom of the eighth inning. He praised the five-inning, one-hit relief work of Willie Fraser and expressed pleasure for Minton, the last of four Angel pitchers. Mark Langston started and was relieved by Mark Eichhorn in the eighth inning.

“They pitched really outstanding,” Rader said after the Angels won for only the third time in 11 games and improved their record on this 10-game trip to 3-5. “Willie went, what, five? Greg two? It was wonderful to see. They saved us.”

Writers here say the Brewers’ emblem, which features a ball nestled safely in a glove, would be more accurate if the ball were falling out of that glove.

Milwaukee is the American League’s worst fielding team, and it showed how richly it deserves that distinction Friday with six errors.

The errors gave the Brewers 87 this season.

Aided by the Milwaukee errors, the Angels scored more runs for Langston than they did in his last five starts. That was all to no avail because Langston, who had lost his last four decisions, was unable to protect leads of 5-2 and 8-4. In his last 10 starts since he was an 8-3 winner over Milwaukee on May 15, Langston is 1-6 with three no-decisions. Overall, the 29-year-old left-hander is 4-9.

Langston was charged with seven earned runs Friday in 7 2/3 innings, raising his earned-run average to 3.71. He walked five and struck out four for a total of 107 strikeouts in 119 innings.

The six errors--which included a hat trick on three routine plays by shortstop Kiki Diaz--tied a Brewer record set on July 26, 1978, against the Angels. The muffs undermined the efforts of starter Dennis Powell and reliever Jaime Navarro.

The only untainted run resulted from Winfield’s two-run home run in the sixth inning, Winfield’s 10th homer of the season. It followed an error by third baseman Gary Sheffield on a grounder by Johnny Ray.

The Angels took a 3-0 lead in the first inning on the springboard of second baseman Jim Gantner’s error on a grounder by leadoff hitter Brian Downing. Lance Parrish drew a bases-loaded walk to force in the first run, and Bichette drove in two more with a single to left.

Milwaukee got two runs back in the bottom of the inning as Langston walked three then yielded a two-run single to Greg Brock with two out.

Diaz’s first error, on a grounder by Winfield, allowed Downing to score for a 4-2 Angel lead after he had walked, moved to second on a single and to third on a grounder. The Angels added a run in the third when Bichette doubled and scored when Diaz threw away Jack Howell’s grounder for a two-base error.

The Brewers cut their deficit to 5-4 in the fifth. Singles by Diaz and Sheffield put runners on first and second, and Dave Parker--Milwaukee’s lone representative in Tuesday’s All-Star game--drove them in with a double that rolled past the glove of center fielder Bichette. Winfield, the right fielder, recovered in time to throw back to the infield where a relay beat Parker to third base.

Winfield’s home run into the left-field seats gave the Angels a 7-4 lead, and they added a run in the seventh inning on singles by Howell and Dick Schofield and an error by Sveum, who had replaced Diaz at short.

Milwaukee erased that lead by batting around in the eighth against Langston and Eichhorn. All of their runs were scored with two out, and the tying run scored on Sheffield’s squeeze bunt.

Rob Deer walked with one out. Brock doubled past Wally Joyner at first, sending Deer to third. The Angels turned Greg Vaughn’s fielder’s choice grounder into an out at home, although Deer didn’t appear to touch the plate and catcher Lance Parrish didn’t appear to tag him.

B.J. Surhoff then lined a single past Langston’s head, scoring Brock and moving Vaughn to third. That was all for Langston, who threw 124 pitches.

Eichhorn struggled through the rest of the inning. Sveum singled to center, scoring Vaughn, and Jim Gantner singled to right, scoring Surhoff. Sheffield scored Sveum with the fourth run of the inning when he bunted toward third, a slow roller Jack Howell charged but couldn’t play in time to first. Robin Yount ended the inning by grounding into a force play.

Winfield preserved the tie in the 14th inning with an excellent running catch on a line drive sinking liner hit by Deer. Yount was at in second base, having walked and stolen second. Angel Notes

Reliever Bryan Harvey left the club to be with his father, Stan, who suffered a mild heart attack Thursday in North Carolina. Stan Harvey was in guarded condition. Manager Doug Rader said Harvey’s absence had some influence on his decision to activate Greg Minton.