For Now, $4 Million Per Langston Victory

Mark Langston’s problem must be--what? You make the call.

(a) Fear of spiders.

(b) Hates California: It’s cold and it’s damp.

(c) Those damn NCAA investigators.

(d) Steinbrenner secretly extorting money from him.

(e) Harsh treatment from these hostile, vicious, Bronx-like Anaheim crowds.

Hey, something has to be bothering this guy. Langston hasn’t won a game at Anaheim Stadium since April 11. He hasn’t beaten anybody anywhere since June 5. He’s 4-12.

If the Angels wanted 4-12, they would have kept Urbano Lugo.

Langston has been such a bust, it’s amazing he didn’t sign with the Yankees.

He pitched seven innings of no-hit ball his first time out. Mike Port must have been thinking that it was the best $16 million of Gene Autry’s play-dough he ever spent.

Now all it does is qualify him to work in procurement at the Pentagon.

Langston lost again Sunday, 8-1. He did get eight Cleveland Indians out, so it wasn’t as though the day was a total loss.

Before the game was over, Langston dressed and hurried home, probably to check the answering machine to see if Jackie Autry had called with any more of those Hollywood show-biz contacts she was supposed to line up.

Actually, nobody’s unhappier about all this than Langston.

“I’d like to see us get this guy some runs,” Langston’s catcher, Lance Parrish, said before the game. “I know it’s eating him up inside.”

After four batters, the Indians were eating him up outside.

Parrish already was on the mound, whacking his pitcher on the rump with his mitt. Two runs already were in. Parrish just wanted to let him know that he was still, literally and figuratively, behind him.

One batter later, the Angel pitching coach was on the mound, talking things over.

When he finally got the third out, the stadium organist segued into: “He Works Hard for the Money.”

Langston didn’t work long. He threw 65 pitches and gave up 10 hits. That should give you some idea of how effective he was--or wasn’t.

In the tunnel between innings, Langston took Parrish aside and said: “Do I have good velocity?”

“You do,” Parrish said.

And he still had it in the third inning, when he was removed from the game. He walked off the field with great velocity.

Langston looked off toward the clouds above the right-field upper deck when the coach came back to get him out of there. Either he was checking to see if the sky was falling or trying to find the Phantom of the Big A.

Maybe he just felt like flying away. Instead, Langston had to walk that lonely walk from the mound to the dugout. Had to hear those boos.

Not the sort of loud, nasty, Langston We Know Where You Live boos he would have heard if he played in New York. You know, like: “We’re not blaming you personally, Mark, but kowabunga, dude, when you gonna win one?”

Langston’s manager, faith-keeper Doug Rader, has been saying for weeks that any time now, Langston is going to reel off 10 victories in a row. Well, if he doesn’t win one soon, that 10-game winning streak won’t end until sometime in mid-1991.

The Angels are running out of season.

The last thing they ever expected was this. Yes, they did count on four victories from Mark Langston--but then they expected to flip the calendar page to May .

What’s gone wrong? All our inquiring minds can do is ask the same question over and over: Why? Why? Why?

“Any questions regarding pitching, I wish you’d ask somebody else,” Manager Doug Rader said. “My angle is not the best.”

Guess he figured reporters are always looking for some angle, any angle.

“I know one thing,” Rader said. “He’s throwing 93 m.p.h. and he’s got tremendous arm strength.”

True, even though that’s two things.

“But you’ll have to talk to somebody else for specifics,” Rader said. “Talk to Lance. I’m not passing the buck. I just want to be accurate, and once again, I don’t have the best seat in the house.”

Parrish does, at least when he’s catching, and he could tell right off the bat that this was one of those days Langston wouldn’t have good enough stuff, good enough location or good enough luck.

We were curious about what sort of sympathy he had.

“Do I feel sorry for him?” Parrish asked. “Yes, to the extent that this is a totally frustrating time for him. He’s trying to make an impression. He signed that big contract, and there were a lot of expectations. But he just can’t seem to turn things around.

“Let’s say you take Orel Hershiser, have him become a free agent, have him sign with the Mets, put him in New York for a couple of months and then have him struggle. It wouldn’t be very pretty to see what happened,” Parrish said. “And it isn’t any better what’s happening here to Langston.”

He works hard for the money.

Can’t buy a win.