Angels Are Stuck on Empty, 2-0 : Baseball: This time, they are on losing end of a shutout in Boston. Boggs’ home run breaks a scoreless tie in the fifth.

What happens when baseball’s best hitter doesn’t do exactly what he wants? Instead of a single or double, he hits a home run.

Boggs broke a scoreless tie in the fifth inning with a homer, and the Red Sox went on to beat the Angels, 2-0, Wednesday night.

Joe Hesketh (10-3) shut out the Angels for 5 2/3 innings, Greg Harris bailed Boston out of a bases-loaded jam and Jeff Reardon got his team-record 34th save. They combined to outduel Kirk McCaskill (10-18), who leads the majors in losses.

Boggs, bidding for a sixth AL batting championship, came to bat in the fifth with one out. He couldn’t pull the 0-and-1 pitch quite as much as he wanted, so he drove it into the Boston bullpen in right-center for his eighth home run.

“I was just trying to make contact and I got the ball elevated,” Boggs said after going one for three and keeping his .335 average. “It was all in the wrist. It was a low breaking ball that broke down and in.

“I was hoping to hit the ball down the line and maybe watch it rattle around a little down there, but I got good wood on it,” he said.

Hesketh is 8-3 since being converted from a reliever into a starter. He gave up six hits and struck out six and became a 10-game winner for the first time since 1985 with Montreal.

Hesketh had two out and nobody on base in the sixth after Boggs’ homer. Then Wally Joyner lined a double to left and two walks loaded the bases.

Harris replaced Hesketh and fell behind 2-and-0 against Lance Parrish. But Harris got Parrish on a routine fly to right, and blanked the Angels in the seventh and eighth.

“If he hits the ball to left, it’s a couple of runs, anyway,” AngelManager Buck Rodgers said. “It’s a game of ifs.”

Reardon took over in the ninth and needed only five pitches to get three outs and his 34th save, breaking Bob Stanley’s club record of 33 set in 1983.

The Red Sox made it 2-0 in the sixth on a single by Mike Greenwell, a hit batter, a groundout and a single by Tom Brunansky.

McCaskill pitched six innings and gave up seven hits. He walked three and struck out three.