Angels Come Up All Roses : Baseball: Their three-run ninth inning beats the Rangers, 3-2. Second baseman stars.

He didn’t know the alignment of the AL West, and he didn’t know a spectacular catch when he made one. But second baseman Bobby Rose knew the Angels had done something special Thursday when they rallied for three runs in the ninth inning to beat the Texas Rangers, 3-2, and record their first one-run victory of the season.

“Coming in here and beating these guys, it’s only a plus,” said Rose, who kept the game within reach by making a diving catch with the bases loaded and no one out in the seventh inning; and who, in the ninth, drove in Chad Curtis with the first run with a single.

“They’ve got a great-hitting team, with power and speed all through the lineup,” Rose added after the Angels’ third victory in four games at Arlington Stadium. “We’ve got to be happy. You can’t take anything away from us. . . . You look around here and see everybody’s faces and you see how happy we are. Now we go to Kansas City and Oakland. They’re in our division, right?”

Um, right.

“I’ve still got Edmonton on my mind,” Rose explained.

His exploits Thursday were major league.

Kevin Reimer’s single off Lee Stevens’ glove, a fielder’s choice grounder Stevens had botched, and a single by Ivan Rodriguez produced a run for the Rangers in the seventh inning, giving them a 2-0 lead. Steve Frey relieved Angel starter Don Robinson and walked pinch-hitter Brian Downing to load the bases. That brought up Jeff Huson, who worked a 3-and-2 count before lofting a high pop-up toward the outfield grass.

“I didn’t know if I could get it,” said Rose, who ran with his back to the plate and lunged to snare the ball. “I just said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get the ball. I’ve got to get the ball.’

“I wasn’t going to give up. I knew he’d been jammed, and the ball wasn’t hit that well. It was fortunate I got the ball. Do you really think it was a good catch?”

Let Hubie Brooks answer that.

“It was a great play. It was a game-saving play,” said Brooks, who helped win it when his ninth-inning grounder hopped between the legs of third baseman Dean Palmer to score Luis Polonia, pinch-running for Rose, with the tying run. Junior Felix, who had singled behind Rose, took third on Palmer’s error and scored the winning run off Jeff Russell (1-1) on Gary Gaetti’s sacrifice fly to center.

“That ball was out there and the infield was in, so I didn’t know if (Rose) was going to catch it,” Brooks added. “Bases loaded, nobody out, that was just a great play.”

Said Chad Curtis, who had opened the ninth inning with a double and scored on Rose’s single: “At the time he made that catch, we were down by two, so it didn’t look important. But when you look back, it was huge.”

It was a breath of life to the Angels. Frey struck out Jack Daugherty on a full-count pitch and induced Rafael Palmeiro to fly to right field, ending the inning.

Chuck Crim (1-0) pitched a perfect eighth inning and earned the victory. Bryan Harvey earned his third save of the season by striking out Dickie Thon and Huson with the tying run on second, after Palmer’s leadoff walk and Rodriguez’s sacrifice.

“We could have put them away in the seventh,” Texas Manager Bobby Valentine said. “We had the opportunity with the bases loaded and no outs.”

The Angels never counted themselves out Thursday, not when Brian Bohanon held them to two singles over eight innings, and not when the Rangers got to Robinson for runs in the third and seventh.

Rodriguez led off the third inning with a double to right field, took third on Al Newman’s sacrifice and scored on Huson’s single to left. Still, Robinson minimized the Rangers’ damage by getting Daugherty to ground to first and Palmeiro to fly to left. But after he gave up the RBI single to Rodriguez, Robinson was spent.

“I didn’t have my good stuff tonight,” he said.

But Rose did.

“That was a hell of a play,” Robinson said. “When the other team’s got an opportunity to break a game wide open and doesn’t, and the other side comes back and wins, that’s the start, hopefully, of a good team.”

Buck Rodgers’ team, which had lost its previous four one-run games, outscored the Rangers, 16-6, in the series and outhit them, 33-25. “Before we left Anaheim, we’d have said we’d be happy to split in Texas because they’re hot,” the Angel manager said. “But when you win the first two games, you’re never satisfied if you split a four-game series. . . . We’ll win more than our share of one-run games. We’d better. We’re going to play a lot of them.”