Angels Win Long Day’s Journey Into Night, 5-3 : Baseball: Abbott pitches five perfect innings, but it takes Brooks’ single to beat Royals in 10th.

The rain pelted him and the groundskeepers scurried around him unrolling the tarp. Jim Abbott didn’t want to leave the mound, not with the control and command that allowed him to pitch five perfect innings against the Royals Saturday.

Finally, as his teammates ran toward the visitors’ dugout at Royals Stadium in the sixth inning, Abbott shrugged and gave in to the inevitable.

“I don’t know if this game is meant for me, sometimes,” he said softly.

Three rain delays totaling 3 hours 16 minutes and an eighth-inning comeback by the Royals meant Abbott’s brilliant effort resulted in a no-decision. But under clouds and with a depleted bullpen, the Angels persevered through six hours 24 minutes for a 5-3 victory on Hubie Brooks’ 10th-inning single.

“This is the longest game I’ve ever participated in. I’ve been in doubleheaders this long, but I’ve never been in a game that had so many rain delays and kept going,” said reliever Steve Frey, who pitched the ninth and 10th innings to earn his first victory since Sept. 14, 1990, when he and the Montreal Expos beat the Pittsburgh Pirates.

“How long was I prepared to go? Infinitely. There wasn’t anybody else down in the bullpen,” Frey said after the Angels’ seventh victory in eight games. “It was do or die with me.”

Abbott’s chances of winning died when Bryan Harvey failed to hold the Royals in the eighth inning, an unpleasant repeat of last season. Of the four 1991 leads Abbott entrusted to the bullpen, three were blown by Harvey.

“Something always seems to fall in the way of Jimmy getting a ‘W,’ ” said catcher Lance Parrish, whose two-run home run in the second inning staked Abbott to a 2-0 lead. “It was just a stellar performance.”

The length of the first rain delay--1 hour 59 minutes--meant he wouldn’t have a complete-game performance. Still, it might have been a winning performance for Abbott, who struck out five, gave up a lone single to Mike Macfarlane leading off the sixth and recorded 42 strikes among his 58 pitches.

The Royals came back for a run in the twice-delayed bottom of the seventh inning when Wally Joyner, whose at-bat was interrupted with a 1-and-1 count, singled to score Gregg Jefferies, who had doubled. When the Angels regained a two-run margin in the eighth on a double by Brooks and a single by Mike Fitzgerald, Abbott’s chances remained good, but neither Mark Eichhorn nor Harvey could stifle the Royals or silence the loyal and soggy fans left from the original crowd of 20,129.

With two out in the eighth, pinch-hitter Jim Eisenreich beat out a grounder to second base and pinch-hitter Chris Gwynn greeted Harvey with a single to left that rolled away from Luis Polonia. The error allowed Eisenreich to score and put Gwynn on second. Third baseman Gary Gaetti booted Keith Miller’s grounder to send Gwynn to third, and he scored on Brian McRae’s line-drive single to right.

Only a diving catch by Von Hayes on Jefferies’ sinking liner to right kept the Royals from surging ahead. It was a defensive gem he matched on Wally Joyner’s leadoff liner to right in the ninth. “He doesn’t make that catch, we lose the game,” Brooks said.

They almost lost it in the ninth, when the Royals loaded the bases on two walks sandwiched around an infield single. Frey got out of trouble by getting David Howard to ground into a force play, giving Brooks a chance to win it in the 10th.

“It was tough out there. Every time I tried to throw a breaking ball, I wasn’t getting good footing,” Frey said. “In the 10th, I made a little bit of an adjustment and slowed down my windup a little bit.”

The Angels won when Polonia led off the 10th inning with a single to right and third baseman Jefferies elected to let Junior Felix’s bunt roll up the third base line. The ball stayed fair, putting runners on first and second. Hayes moved them up with a sacrifice, and Brooks sent them home by lining a 1-and-1 pitch from Jeff Montgomery (0-2) into right field.

“It was a long game,” Brooks said. “I was tired. And bored.”

But ultimately happy. “After they scored those runs against Harv, you could just feel the team deflate,” said Abbott, whose earned-run average fell to 0.89. “For us to come back makes this a pretty big win for us on what’s amounted to a pretty good road trip.”