A’s Stewart Wins His Duel in Sun : Baseball: Oakland starter outpitches the Angels’ Finley, who gives up leadoff homer to Rickey Henderson and loses, 4-1.

It evolved into a contest of wills, a tense matchup between a pitcher who is sure he will win 20 games for a fourth consecutive season and one who hopes he will win 20 for the first time this season.

For seven innings Sunday, Oakland’s Dave Stewart gave Chuck Finley and the Angels no room to waver, and Finley was no more generous to Stewart and the A’s. Given so little, the A’s still took away from Anaheim Stadium a 4-1 victory, emphasizing in a dozen different ways the distinctions between champions and the rest.

Pitching four days after an 11-inning shutout victory over Seattle, Stewart sustained a brilliant stretch Sunday by giving the Angels only one unearned run in the sixth on an error and Devon White’s triple.

Finley was nearly as good, recovering after he yielded a home run to Rickey Henderson leading off the game. But he faltered under the pressure applied in the eighth by Henderson and the A’s.

By giving up only five hits over seven innings, Stewart (15-8) moved a step closer to becoming the first pitcher to record four consecutive 20-win seasons since Hall of Famer Jim Palmer did so in 1975-78.

“When he gets in a game like this one--and he’s had about four or five all year--where you can’t blink, you can’t flinch or you lose, he’s awesome,” A’s Manager Tony La Russa said. “That’s two games back to back and you tell me how he can do that on three days’ rest, twice, first against (Erik) Hanson and now against Finley where you just can’t flinch.”

Finley flinched in the eighth, walking Henderson on a full count. The game’s third-leading base stealer stole his 920th base and scored on Dave Henderson’s two-out single, but the A’s didn’t stop there. Terry Steinbach doubled and Mark McGwire deflated the spirits of the 51,597 fans with a two-run single, giving the A’s a 4-1 lead.

“We sent our best pitcher out there, they sent their best pitcher out. You knew we were going to have a battle today,” said Henderson, who extended his own record with his 44th home run leading off a game. “We scored off him early and Stew shut them down real well. It was tough because Finley’s a real tough competitor.”

Tough as he is, Finley was not prepared for another loss Sunday. Informed after the game that his 8-month old nephew had died of a heart problem in a New Orleans hospital, Finley was distraught and did not speak with reporters. He will fly today to his hometown of Monroe, La., for the funeral of James Cory Cox, the son of his sister, Susan Cox, and her husband, Rodney.

“He pitched great. He pitched well enough to win,” Angel Manager Doug Rader said of Finley. “It was an excellent ballgame. You’ve got to admire both performances. They got a two-out base hit to break it open and that was the ballgame. It was a very good ballgame.”

And a very satisfying game for Stewart, who moved ahead of Finley and is tied with Boston’s Roger Clemens for the second-highest victory total in the AL. Stewart lowered his earned-run average to 2.58, behind Clemens’ 2.14 and Finley’s 2.40.

“I thought I threw the ball pretty well and got outs when I needed them,” said Stewart, who has won four consecutive games and has given up one earned run over 27 innings. “I just wanted to give us a chance to win the ballgame.

“Nerve-wracking is what it is against a pitcher like Finley. You know Finley is going to be in the ballgame from the first out till the last. You hope you don’t make the first mistake. Fortunately, he made a mistake to Rickey Henderson in the first inning. Devon White had an RBI for them in the sixth and that was another mistake, but Finley’s a great competitor, probably one of the best in the league.”

But the A’s are a team of superb competitors. Henderson excelled at the plate, on the basepaths and in left field, crashing into the barrier in the second inning to catch a fly ball hit by Brian Downing.

“You don’t get a better example. That’s probably as good as you’ll ever see,” La Russa said. “He hits a home run, makes a run where nobody else could make it--and you don’t steal many bases off Finley--and he plays a nice left field, too.”

Henderson, whose league-leading batting average fell a point to .332, said his leadoff home run on a 3-and-2 fastball was a nice boost for the A’s. “We knew there weren’t going to be many runs scored,” he said. “The name of the game was who was going to score first.”

Stewart, with relief help from Rick Honeycutt and Dennis Eckersley, made sure the Angels didn’t score most.

“I’m just trying to be consistent and give our ballclub what it needed,” he said. “I’ve been pitching well but the results just haven’t been real good. Things are starting to go more in my favor.

“Twenty wins never creeps into my mind because I know I’m going to do it. I know it. I’ve done it the past three years and nobody else has. No question, I’m going to do that. It’s something I expect to do. Basically, it’s not a matter of if I do it, but when I do it.”

The A’s have taken eight of 10 games from the Angels this season and are still 2 1/2 games ahead of the Chicago White Sox.

“I don’t think we’re perfect, but I don’t think there’s an area where anyone can say, ‘We can beat that club there,’ ” La Russa said. “We can improve, but I think we’re playing pretty well. There’s always a way to play better with what you’ve got.”

Angel Notes

Sunday’s attendance of 51,597 gave the Angels a record for attendance at a four-game series at Anaheim Stadium, with a total of 188,616. The previous four-game series record was 173,347, set July 1-4, 1983 against Kansas City.

Rookie Joe Grahe, who had a chance to win his major league debut Saturday against Oakland, didn’t mind not getting a decision as long as the Angels won. He showed considerable poise after Rickey Henderson walked, stole second, went to third on an error and scored the first run before the game was more than a few minutes old. “I thought it went OK. I was able to keep us in the game and it was a big game for the Angels,” said Grahe, who gave up three earned runs in 5 1/3 innings. “It was kind of a relaxer when Henderson scored. It was, ‘OK, they got their first run,’ that way I didn’t have to be anxious about when they’d score.”

Chili Davis, on the disabled list with a strained lower back, will be re-evaluated Tuesday. He was been hitting from both sides of the plate as well as throwing and running and has reported no pain. Wally Joyner (broken right kneecap) is progressing slowly. Mark McLemore (sprained right wrist) has been hitting, taking grounders and throwing without difficulty. Greg Minton (sore left arm) has been throwing lightly. He hopes he has found a cure for his arm woes: shaving his mustache. “Maybe if I’m incognito from my elbow it will hurt less,” he said.

ANGEL ATTENDANCE

Sunday: 51,597

1990 (53 dates): 1,769,060

1989 (53 dates): 1,690,316

Increase: 78,744

1990 Average: 33,378