Henderson’s Homer in 10th Beats Angels : Baseball: Oakland, trailing 6-0 in the fifth inning, comes back to record a 7-6 victory and drop California 13 1/2 games back.

The Angels’ vital signs flickered Monday night when Rickey Henderson’s home run with one out in the 10th inning capped a dramatic comeback and gave the Oakland Athletics a 7-6 victory over the Angels at the Oakland Coliseum.

In the opener of a stretch Manager Doug Rader had termed “vitally important” to his club’s pennant hopes, the Angels built a 6-0 lead after 5 1/2 innings only to see it evaporate when their relief pitchers proved unable to stop the late-charging A’s.

The Angels fell 13 1/2 games out, matching their largest deficit of the season, as the A’s maintained a three-game edge over the Chicago White Sox in the American League West.

“It’s unbelievable how things happened,” Angel outfielder Luis Polonia said after the A’s pulled even on three runs in the ninth and and then won it on Henderson’s home run off Cliff Young (0-1).

The Angels had won 41 consecutive games in which they led after seven innings.

“We thought we had the game and boom! It’s hard to think about how things have been going,” Polonia said. “Who could think about this game and think we’re going to lose it?

“It’s going to be hard to forget this one, especially because of who we were facing. We don’t have time to lose games like this anymore.

“Little by little they came back and won the game. It was unbelievable.”

To come back little by little was precisely the A’s plan after the Angels got to Oakland starter Dave Stewart for five runs--four of them earned--in five innings and Joe Klink for another in the sixth. Max Venable’s RBI-single with two out in the sixth was the last hit for the Angels.

By contrast, the trio that followed Angel starter Kirk McCaskill after McCaskill’s shoulder tightened up collectively allowed six runs in 3 1/3 innings and wiped out the 6-1 lead McCaskill had when he left after six innings.

With Scott Bailes disabled by the flu and a back muscle strain rendering Bryan Harvey unavailable, the bullpen was short.

With Mike Fetters spotty and Mark Eichhorn ineffective again, Young was the only option. He entered the game in the ninth and yielded a sacrifice fly to Troy Afenir and a run-scoring single to Felix Jose that tied the score at 6-6.

“We kept saying, ‘Let’s chip away, chip away,’ ” said Henderson, who had never seen Young before but had been tipped by teammates to expect a fastball from the rookie left-hander.

“We didn’t mind seeing McCaskill go. He had a slow breaking ball and real good fastball. He pitched a brilliant game.”

Brilliant, but briefer than McCaskill would have liked. “I’ve got a 90-year-old body,” said the right-hander, who missed two starts this season because of elbow problems. “It’s getting to be a little frustrating. . . . The game was going my way.”

The Angels hit Stewart hard. Single runs in the first, second and fourth and two more in the fifth spelled the end of the evening for Stewart, who has gone 4-7 after his 8-1 start.

“It was going pretty good there for a while,” Venable said. “Not that we sat back and took it easy, but you’ve got to get them out.”

Jose Canseco hit a two-run homer in the seventh to bring the A’s within 6-3. It was Canseco’s 29th home run of the season and seventh in 13 games since the All-Star break.

Two walks and three hits set up the three-run ninth, including a bases-loaded bloop hit by Mark McGwire off the glove of second baseman Johnny Ray and into short right field that scored the first run of the inning.

“We gave them too many outs,” Rader said. “That in-betweener that we don’t catch. . . . You give a club like that too many outs and that’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to kill you.”

The challenge for the Angels after losing the third of three games against the A’s this season is to keep Monday’s loss from killing their season. “It’s going to hurt them,” Henderson said.

Young is determined not to let that happen. “It should make you want to bounce back and get them tomorrow,” he said. “It makes you play a little harder.”

Harder than it will be for the Angels to regroup. “I don’t care who you play, you lose a game like this, you’re not happy about it,” McCaskill said. “Sure, everybody was thinking, we all feel we have to sweep to get back in this thing.

“The problem is if you approach it that way, you can defeat yourself. The way you’re successful is by being relaxed and focusing on the task at hand. When you’re struggling, if you start to look ahead, you compound all the problems we’ve had the past two months.

“We’ve got to forget about this and come back. I know it’s not going to be easy but we’ve got to do it.”

Angel Notes

Angel television announcer Joe Torre expects the St. Louis Cardinals to decide within a week whether they want him to be their next manager. Torre was interviewed by General Manager Dal Maxvill last Wednesday, but Hal Lanier and Don Baylor have also been interviewed. Lanier and Torre are considered the top candidates.

“At first I wasn’t sure (if he was interested), but the more I started thinking about who I’d be working with, it gets you a little excited,” said Torre, who lost out on jobs with Minnesota, Pittsburgh, the Chicago Cubs and Houston after his 1984 dismissal as manager of the Atlanta Braves. “I always find my way back there, for Old-Timers’ games or whatever. . . . I’m lucky. The situation here makes it that much tougher if they want me.”

Shortstop Dick Schofield was scratched from the lineup minutes before game time because of soreness in his right shoulder, the result of his dive for ball Sunday. Reliever Bryan Harvey was unavailable Sunday and Monday because of a strained muscle which left him with a stiff neck. His status is day to day.

Despite the distance between the top teams in the AL West and the rest of the pack, A’s Manager Tony La Russa says the division is “probably more than a two-team race. There’s plenty of time for clubs to play their way into it.” Outfielder Luis Polonia, prior to Monday night’s loss, said a sweep in Oakland was imperative if the Angels are to be among them.

“This series means the whole thing for us,” Polonia said. “If we don’t beat these guys right here, there’s no more chance for us. There’s no more time. We’ve got to go out and do it.”

A re-examination of infielder Mark McLemore’s sore right thumb and wrist found no new damage. He will continue therapy. . . . Bob McClure (sore left elbow) will pitch a simulated game Friday. If all goes well, he will go out on rehabilitation assignment.