A New Dodger Pays Off Quickly : Freeway Series: Strawberry hits homer, scores all the runs in 3-1 victory over Angels.

Darryl Strawberry made an impact in his first Anaheim Stadium game with his new employer Saturday, scoring all three Dodger runs in a 3-1 exhibition victory over the Angels.

Strawberry scored once against Angel starter Mark Langston, once against reliever Scott Bailes--an unearned run in the seventh that was the first run scored against Bailes in 13 1/3 spring innings--and the final time in the ninth on a towering home run off reliever Mark Eichhorn.

The Dodgers (15-17) have defeated the Angels five consecutive times over two seasons in the Freeway Series. They also have won their past five exhibitions. The Angels have lost three in a row and are 12-15 with only today’s Freeway Series finale at Anaheim Stadium remaining before opening day.

A crowd of 59,090, the seventh-largest to watch a Freeway Series game at Anaheim Stadium, saw Langston give up four hits and one run over six innings. He finished exhibition play at 3-0 with a 2.25 earned-run average. The Angels supported him with one run off Kevin Gross, in the third inning. Luis Polonia singled, took second on catcher Mike Scioscia’s throwing error, took third on a ground out and scored on Dave Winfield’s double to right.

It was the Angels’ first game on their new infield, which is the product of an attempt to cut back on defensive problems of a year ago.

Mix dirt and organic material, add red clay and the result is an infield the Angels find far more palatable than the dry, cracked surface they played on last year.

At the very least, they say, the new red clay-dominated mixture makes the infield look good.

“It’s lots better, unless this is how (the old infield) started out,” said third baseman Gary Gaetti, who disliked the old, gray-tinged infield enough to say so when negotiating his free-agent contract with the Angels last winter.

“The dirt is real fine, real moist. You want an infield like a brownie: moist and chewy.”

The improvements are to shortstop Dick Schofield’s taste. Any improvements would be. “I hope it’s better,” he said.

First baseman Wally Joyner withheld judgment, saying he needed to see how the field would hold up under the heat of summer and the rigors of playing every day before he pronounces it a success or failure.

“It’s too soon. You have to wait for a couple of bad hops--then we can start complaining,” he said.

Frequent complaints last season from Angels and visiting players convinced club officials a change was necessary. After the annual motocross event was over, they uprooted the bluegrass in the infield and replaced it with the same hybrid-Bermuda they had been using along the sidelines and in the outfield.

The dirt also was changed, after sophisticated soil analyses were done. The previous infield had been in place since 1989. That year, the Angels had the league’s second-best fielding percentage; in 1990, when Kevin Uhlich, Angel director of stadium operations, said the infield began to separate, the Angels were the second-worst fielding team with 142 errors.

“We went to a red-clay mixture, and we mixed different particle sizes,” Uhlich said. “By changing, that will make it lock up and hold moisture. . . .

“We were going to change it even before Gary signed, with all the complaints we got. We knew we had to come up with something better, and we feel it should do everything we require of it. If anything, it’s prettier, a real striking red.”

Series Notes

Dodger first baseman Eddie Murray sat out Saturday because of a sore hip. Gary Carter was the designated hitter. . . . Dodger pitcher John Candelaria and Bert Blyleven and Dave Parker of the Angels, three of four active players remaining from the Pirates’ 1979 World Series championship team, had a reunion before the game.

The game was officiated by college umpires after the breakdown in negotiations between the Major League Baseball Umpires Assn. and management.