Angels’ Season Slipping Away : Baseball: Winfield takes third strike with runners on first and second for the final out, and the Athletics win, 3-2.

The home stand that Angel President Richard Brown called “the season” for his team ended Sunday with a 3-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics, the Angels’ eighth loss in a nine-game stretch at Anaheim Stadium, their 10th defeat in 11 games and 23rd in 32 since they occupied first place on July 3.

It ended before 41,424 with Dave Winfield taking a third strike from Dennis Eckersley with runners on first and second after Oakland Manager Tony La Russa took the radical step of walking the potential winning run--Wally Joyner--to get to Winfield.

It ended with the spectacle of left fielder Luis Polonia grossly misjudging Willie Wilson’s fifth-inning line drive, turning it into a two-run triple that tied the score and negated a credible effort by Angel starter Joe Grahe (1-3).

It ended with the Angels 13 games behind the division-leading Twins, the largest deficit they have faced this season.

“I guess we’re getting close to being history,” Polonia said. “Unless we pull something out on the road, win every day. That’s what we’ve been talking about all season and what we’ve been saying we have to do. I hope things change. That’s all we can do, hope.”

The Angels are headed nowhere, with intermediate stops for 11 games in Minnesota, Seattle and Oakland. They left after Sunday’s game to visit the same three teams that beat them in eight of nine games on this home stand, a trip that once loomed as potentially important but now seems little more than playing out the schedule.

Also to be played out is the scenario of what will happen to Manager Doug Rader. Team executives have declined to comment on Rader’s status since Jackie Autry, the team’s executive vice president and wife of owner Gene Autry, said earlier this week Rader’s dismissal had been discussed.

Brown declined to comment on the team Sunday, but another loss and another game’s slippage in the standings can’t enhance Rader’s chances of finishing the season.

Polonia, for one, said the speculation over Rader’s firing has hurt the team. “I think that’s why I’m playing bad. I’m thinking so hard about him staying, I’m not thinking about what I have to do,” said Polonia, who acknowledged he simply misplayed Wilson’s line drive when he came in when he should have gone out.

“I don’t want the man to leave. I have to relax. The thing really bothers me a lot, seeing his job is on the line. It’s hard to see how he gets blamed for everything. We should win this game, 2-0. I make the mistake that cost the ballgame.”

But Gary Gaetti, whose second-inning home run against Mike Moore (11-7) gave the Angels a 2-0 lead, said the uncertainty surrounding Rader was “a non-issue.” He added, “Those are excuses. It’s not a distraction.”

There’s no debating why the Angels lost Sunday. They left 11 runners on base, including three in the eighth. Luis Sojo’s first home run in nearly a year put them on top in the first, and Gaetti led off the second with a homer into the left-field bullpen.

But Polonia’s mistake in the fifth, which followed a single by Ernest Riles and a hit batter, undid all of that. Wilson scored when Grahe’s 0-and-1 pitch to Dave Henderson bounced in the dirt and past catcher Ron Tingley.

“We should have won, 2-0. Then again, we found a way to blow another one,” Tingley said. “He did what you want a fifth starter to do. He gave us seven strong innings, outstanding innings, and we come away with a loss. There’s no justice sometimes.

“We should put together a highlight film on how we’ve blown games this year. It would be about six hours long.”

That highlight film wouldn’t include any scenes of Rader throwing tantrums or overturning the post-game buffet table. He is intent on not changing his manner, no matter if he is called too easy on his players.

“If you act one way, you’re acting like Billy Martin. If you act the other way, you’re Walter Alston,” he said. “I’m going to act the way I want to act, the way I feel is appropriate and what’s best for the people involved. I’m not going to do something that’s staged.

“If it were something because of a lack of effort or along those lines, different behavior might be called for. These people are going through difficult emotional times. . . . I think I have the wherewithal to know what’s appropriate.”

Asked if he had tried the stern approach, Rader smiled wearily. “Trust me. Over the last month, everything’s been tried,” he said.

And when you’ve tried everything?

“You keep trying,” he said.

Rather than trying to assemble a prolonged winning streak, Gaetti said, the Angels must focus on each pitch, each game.

“Each job as it comes up,” he said, tapping his fist on top of a plastic trash can for emphasis. “Get it done when you’re in the position to get it done. We didn’t today. Terrible clutch hitting. . . .

“(Grahe) pitched well. We haven’t been able to play a whole game for a while.”