Angels See Red on Reed Calls : Baseball: Parrish sounds off after he homers and is ejected in 3-1 loss to Tigers.

Doug Rader and Lance Parrish were ejected and Mark Langston was dejected.

The costs of the Angels’ 3-1 loss to the Tigers Wednesday were higher than the fine Parrish risked for calling Rick Reed “a horrible umpire” and declaring that Reed carries a grudge.

The immediate cost was a game in the standings, leaving the Angels eight behind the Minnesota Twins in the AL West--as far out of first place as they have been his season. Their inability to beat Walt Terrell (7-9) cost them the chance to capitalize on a solid effort by Mark Langston (14-5), who gave up homers to Cecil Fielder and Rob Deer in the second inning and to Fielder again, his 29th, in the eighth.

Parrish was unhappy all night over a strike zone he thought was smaller when Langston pitched than when Terrell was on the mound. Moments after Rader was ejected for disputing Reed’s third strike call on Gary Gaetti in the seventh inning, Parrish was thrown out for flipping his bat into the air after a called third strike.

Not usually given to displays of temper, Parrish acknowledged he was frustrated by a slump he merely dented with his second-inning homer off Terrell. But Parrish maintained that Reed, a Detroit native, doesn’t like him, and carries that dislike onto the field.

“I’m up there trying to get something going. I’m trying to be selective, hit good pitches and they make it impossible,” said Parrish, whose last ejection was last Aug. 19--also by Reed.

“He, in particular. He’s the worst, in my opinion. He is a horrible umpire. He’s just got no clue where the strike zone is. I don’t think he deserves to be an umpire. . . .

“I don’t really think he gave us any pitches all night. Mark was throwing his curveball all over the plate, and he (Reed) was saying it was too high or too low. Unless he split the heart of the plate, we didn’t get the call. I just think he’s terrible, period. . . .

“A lot of pitches he called strikes that I thought were balls. When a guy makes the plate five inches wider on each side, that makes it more difficult. I’ve been going through a bad streak, and it’s hard enough to hit good pitches. When he calls bad pitches strikes, that’s frustrating.”

Reed, who is in his ninth season on the American League staff, denied showing favoritism toward Detroit or a bias against Parrish, a former Tiger.

“I take my job very seriously,” he said. “I grade myself extremely hard, and I think I had a good night.”

The Angels were quick to say Terrell had a good night after he recorded his first complete-game victory since Sept. 27, 1989, when he was with the Yankees. “He pitched well, but he got some help, too,” Gaetti said. “I don’t want to take anything away from the guy’s performance. A guy pitching like that doesn’t need help.”

Terrell, reportedly offended by a remark made by the official scorer about a wide strike zone, refused to talk to reporters.

Rader and Langston declined to discuss Reed’s calls. Langston said little about the game at all, the first in which he has given up three home runs. He has yielded 23, most among major league pitchers.

“There’s really not a whole lot to say,” said Langston, who preserved the Angels’ comeback hopes by striking out Deer and Lloyd Moseby and getting Andy Allanson to line to left with the bases loaded in the sixth inning. “I’m very frustrated and I’m not going to comment.”

The Angels had won three consecutive games and four of five.

“It’s frustrating. At this point we just have to win ballgames,” Parrish said. “We were on a decent roll coming into this game. We were hoping we’d sweep these guys and come home with our heads high. This is a setback, but we still have the ability to put something together. . . . We’ve got some games coming up in the division that are a make or break situation if we can capitalize on them.”