Tigers Don’t Rain on Angels’ Parade : Baseball: Langston (10-2) joins Finley as a 10-game winner after waiting through 97-minute delay.

After enduring a season filled with failure and anguish in 1990, Mark Langston didn’t mind sitting through a 97-minute rain delay Saturday before his 10th victory of the season.

“I was wondering if we’d get it in, and finally the rain subsided,” he said. “It was worth the wait.”

Langston gave up four hits and one earned run in seven innings to earn his fourth consecutive victory, ninth in his last 10 and as many as he had all of last season. The Angels’ 10-3 victory over the Tigers featured four hits by Luis Polonia, Dave Parker’s fifth homer of the season and two runs batted in by Dave Winfield that moved Winfield ahead of Tris Speaker and into 21st place on the career RBI list with 1,563, but Langston (10-2) was the star.

His accomplishments Saturday included winning for the sixth time after an Angel loss and working into the seventh inning or later for the 12th consecutive time and 13th in 14 starts this season. Both feats impressed Angel Manager Doug Rader.

“That’s a real tribute to a man, that he’s able to get us back on the right track. He’s staying away from the big, catastrophic innings that hurt him last year,” Rader said of Langston, whose victory made the Angels the only major league team with two 10-game winners, Langston joining Chuck Finley (10-3).

Both also have good prospects of winning 20 games. Should they pull it off, that would give the Angels two 20-game winners for the first time since 1973, when Nolan Ryan was 21-16 and Bill Singer was 20-14. No Angel pitcher has won 20 since Ryan was 22-16 in 1974.

Langston, who was 10-17 last season and didn’t win his 10th game until his 32nd start, isn’t thinking ahead to winning his 20th. Nor is he thinking back to last season.

“(Winning 20) is something I don’t think about. I just keep my focus on one game at a time and what I have to do in that game,” he said. “If it wasn’t for you (reporters), I don’t think I would even remember last year. Last year was last year. That’s in the past. I released that real quick.”

The biggest difference in Langston this season is that he is quicker to end opposing teams’ scoring threats. The Tigers scored once against him in the second, on John Shelby’s homer, and an unearned run in the fourth after a walk, a double and a passed ball.

Mickey Tettleton homered in the eighth against Mark Eichhorn for Detroit’s final run, ending Eichhorn’s streak of 63 homerless innings.

Limiting opponents’ big innings, Langston said, “just comes with being aggressive. That’s my philosophy, to go right at them. I didn’t do that last year and I did it the years before.

“I had a lot of help from my friends tonight. All those runs picked me up and I had great defense behind me. All those things help.”

Ritz (0-3) was in trouble throughout his brief stay. He gave up singles to Luis Polonia and Dick Schofield, the first two he faced, and walked Wally Joyner on five pitches to load the bases. He fell behind Winfield, letting the Angel right fielder get a 3-and-1 count before Winfield flied to left, deep enough for Polonia to score.

Ritz managed to get Dave Parker to fly to left on the first pitch he threw, but he walked Gary Gaetti on four pitches. He got a 1-and-2 count to Dave Gallagher before throwing a pitch that was very close to being a strike but was called a ball, much to Ritz’s obvious displeasure.

Ritz’s unhappiness increased when Gallagher drove the next pitch up the middle for a single, scoring Schofield and Joyner. Donnie Hill ended the inning by grounding to first.

“You can’t say the balance of the game was on one pitch, but I know that was big,” Gallagher said. “If (plate umpire Mark Johnson) had rung me up, I wouldn’t have argued.”

An infield hit by Ron Tingley, a double by Polonia and a walk to Schofield spelled the end of Ritz’s outing. Former Angel Dan Petry did a good job to hold the Angels to one run, as he struck out Joyner, corraled Winfield’s shot toward the mound in time to get Winfield at first and got Parker to fly to right.

Although Petry threw Winfield out, Tingley scored the Angels’ fourth run. The RBI was Winfield’s 1,563rd, lifting him past Speaker on the career RBI list.

The Tigers scored in the second on John Shelby’s homer to left, the 12th hit by the Tigers in six games against the Angels this season. Detroit leads the major leagues with 79 homers.

Parker’s homer to right leading off the fifth gave Langston a 5-2 lead. Parker has a seven-game hitting streak, his longest as an Angel.