Third Yankee Rookie Is the Charm for Angels

The Texas Rangers won 14 games in a row in May. The Angels said their streak was coming.

The Minnesota Twins won 15 games in a row in June. The Angels said their streak was coming. Say this about the Angels. They don’t lie.

They may not know how to fill out the order form, but they don’t lie.

This was the streak that arrived on Doug Rader’s doorstep July 4:

Royals 12, Angels 5.

Rangers 8, Angels 0.

Rangers 4, Angels 3.

Rangers 7, Angels 0.

Yankees 2, Angels 0.

Yankees 2, Angels 1.

Yankees 2, Angels 0.

“I couldn’t believe it,” outfielder Luis Polonia said. “Who could believe it? I don’t think anybody who comes to the park could believe it. We have this lineup, as good as anybody in baseball, and we’re getting one hit, two hits a game. Just incredible.”

General Manager Dan O’Brien was worried. “I get worried when we lose two straight,” he said. Team president Richard Brown couldn’t sleep. Shortstop Dick Schofield talked about mounting tension. Outfielder Max Venable talked about a mounting consensus in the clubhouse: “Some of us were thinking about doing ourselves in.”

Seven losses in a row, four shutouts in six games and you began to suspect the Angels were staging a nonviolent sit-in to protest the non-appearance of Mark Langston and Bryan Harvey in the All-Star Game.

They weren’t hitting anyone.

Baseball is a simple game; the Angels were making it look painfully difficult. Country philosopher Charles Edward Finley realized this Sunday when one probing mind asked what the Angels had to do to reverse their current field reversal.

“Win,” Finley drawled.

Easy as that.

“Sooner or later,” Finley said by way of elaboration, “we were gonna get somebody 10 runs.”

Seven Angel pitchers had divided nine runs during the losing streak, but Finley is a steadfast believer in the law of averages. The Yankees couldn’t keep starting rookie pitchers and keep bamboozling Angel hitters.

Scott Kamieniecki? Maybe.

Jeff Johnson? OK.

Wade Taylor?

Time to get real again.

Sunday, the Angels didn’t wade through Taylor--they dived right in. A run in the first, a run in the third, three more in the fourth. By the time the Yankees’ bullpen got involved, the Angels were on their way to 10 runs and Finley swooped in to provide back-up, a true Angel of mercy.

He was the last Angel pitcher to win a game--he beat Kansas City on July 3--and now he is the most recent. The streak is dead, Finley is 13-4 and the air above Anaheim Stadium is worth breathing once more.

Not that Finley wasn’t culpable. He contributed his three innings’ worth to the streak, getting blown out early in Nolan Ryan’s 7-0 flirt with perfection last weekend. Before Sunday, Finley’s earned-run average had soared above 4.00 and his first-inning tangles nearly had Rader jumping off the wagon for the Marlboros again.

It was happening once more against the Yankees--a walk, two hits and a run in the first inning--and Angel catcher Ron Tingley wanted to walk to the mound and slap Finley. Or have Finley do the honors himself.

“I was thinking,” Tingley said, “that if he could step away from himself and watch what he was doing, he’d want to punch himself.”

Said Finley: “I probably would’ve. That’s probably why Ron wears a mask. If I didn’t punch me, it was going to be him.”

Finley put two more runners on base in both the second and third innings before a running catch by Polonia, denying Matt Nokes in the gap, snapped him out of it. There would be five more hits, but no more runs until the eighth, when Bernie Williams homered to bring the eventual final total to 10-2.

He is the first American League pitcher to win 13 games this summer and the first Angel pitcher to win since the Red Devil stands closed, but Finley downplayed his significance on an afternoon when, he claimed, he just hitched a ride.

“I was just the right guy on the mound,” he said. “You know, these guys know how to hit. Last week, the plate was getting so stagnant, people forgot what it felt like to step on. . . . If you look around, there’s so much talent on this team, we’re just waiting to explode.”

Finley admitted his ears were burning as the streak veered closer and closer to double digits.

“I know people look at us and say, ‘How can you lose seven straight with Dave Winfield, (Gary) Gaetti, Lance Parrish and Wally Joyner?,’ ” Finley said. “But that’s just part of the game. Every time we hit the ball hard, they’d catch it. Every time we hit the ball soft, they’d catch it.

“Every team goes through it. We just hit a point where we couldn’t do anything.”

Finley could only take care of himself, an ample enough assignment. During the All-Star break, he said he had time to mull his first half, which was long on victories but short on the other numbers that put him in that game in 1989 and 1990.

“You’re looking at stats from two years when I pretty much dominated,” he said. “I’m throwing 200-plus innings with a 2.30, 2.40 ERA. Those are miracle years for me. It’s going to be pretty hard for me to match those years.

“I just haven’t been as consistent and with three days off to think about it, I kinda figured out that I shouldn’t let one inning make or break me. I don’t need to change what I’ve been doing the last three years. I’ve just got to stay aggressive--and get out of the first inning.”

That handled, major things can be accomplished. Long losing streaks, the kind that can drag a team from first place to fifth in a week, can be swept aside in three hours’ time.

“We’re a lot better team than to lose seven in a row,” Finley said. “I really believe we’re on the verge. I think our best baseball is still ahead of us. We haven’t put together any type of run yet.”

Not forward, anyway.