Angels Receive Quality Start, Faulty Finish : Baseball: Blyleven goes a solid six innings in return, but Yankees win it in 10th, 5-4.

By HELENE ELLIOTT

May 20, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

NEW YORK —

Wearing a major league uniform again was Bert Blyleven’s real triumph, the reward for the sweat he spent rehabilitating his pitching shoulder after two operations had put it back together.

Having come this far, Blyleven was disappointed to settle for less than a complete victory Tuesday. In his first outing since Aug. 10, 1990, the 41-year-old right-hander overcame a shaky start to last six innings, but he didn’t get the decision in the Angels’ 5-4, 10-inning loss to the Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

“I was happy with it, other than we lost the ballgame,” said Blyleven, who gave up homers to Mel Hall and Kevin Maas in the second and a run in the fourth on a walk, a single and Matt Nokes’ sacrifice fly.

Blyleven left with the Yankees ahead, 3-2, and avoided the loss when pinch-hitter Bobby Rose tagged reliever Steve Howe for a two-run homer into the left-field bullpen in the eighth. The Yankees tied it in the bottom of the eighth on Nokes’ homer against Steve Frey and won it in the 10th when Randy Velarde’s one-out single off Mark Eichhorn (1-3) scored Hall, who had singled, tagged on a fly to right by Danny Tartabull and moved to third on a walk.

Like Blyleven, Manager Buck Rodgers wasn’t around for the end of the Angels’ fourth loss in five games. Rodgers and catcher Mike Fitzgerald were ejected by second base umpire Durwood Merrill for arguing a call against Fitzgerald on a force play in the fifth inning, but Rodgers was seen watching from the runway that leads from the clubhouse to the dugout.

“I feel happiness in that I feel like I kept the club in the game, but unhappiness in that we lost,” said Blyleven, who struck out two for a career total of 3,633, the fourth-highest total in history. “We’re all here to win ballgames and we didn’t do that tonight.

“Between 2 o’clock, when I got here, and 7:30, it felt like 24 hours. I was so pumped. Then I went out to the bullpen and got some of that excitement out of me. Probably, my emotions were the same as for my first game, the idea of going out and having to prove yourself all over again.”

Blyleven proved he hadn’t lost his knack of yielding homers--he has given up 415, the sixth-highest career total--but he also proved he had at least a semblance of the curveball that helped him record 279 victories.

After Nokes’ sacrifice fly in the fourth, Maas and Velarde singled to load the bases and get the Angel bullpen into action. With the crowd of 14,919 roaring, Blyleven got Pat Kelly to swing over an 0-and-2 curveball for the second out. Mike Gallego flied to right to end the inning.

“That was probably the best curveball I threw all game,” Blyleven said of the pitch to Kelly. “That was a big out.”

Rodgers praised Blyleven’s ability to regroup after an uncertain beginning.

“His delivery was a little erratic starting off and he got some line drives caught for him that kept him in the game, but the last couple of innings he got his delivery straightened out,” Rodgers said. “I don’t care if you’re 21 or 41, if you don’t pitch for a year you’re going to be nervous.

“He had a good change and he threw his curveball at a couple of speeds. He survived the first four and then he started to pitch better.”

Lee Stevens cut the Yankees’ lead to 3-2 in the sixth on a single to left, his first RBI since May 4 and only his fourth of the season. Howe stopped a rally in the seventh, when the Angels loaded the bases with no one out, relieving Scott Sanderson and getting pinch-hitter Chad Curtis on a line drive to second and pinch-hitter Jose Gonzalez on a double-play grounder.

The Angels appeared to trump him in the eighth, when Rose collected his second career pinch-hit homer--the first was off Howe last July 27 at Yankee Stadium, the only homer Howe yielded in 48 1/3 innings in 1991--but Nokes tied it at 4-4 with his sixth homer of the season.

Hall led off the 10th with a single off Eichhorn, and when Tartabull sent right fielder John Morris back to the warning track in right to catch his fly ball, Hall tagged and slid easily into second.

“It’s just a matter of how he approaches the ball,” Hall said. “The way he went after the ball was like he wasn’t paying attention at all. If he was going to get me, he was going to have to throw a strike. I’ll take my chance in that situation, a tie ballgame.”

It wasn’t a tie for long. Eichhorn walked Nokes intentionally, but then walked Maas on five pitches to load the bases. With the infield and outfield drawn in, Velarde had no problem finding a place to deposit his game-winning hit. “It was a great situation to be in,” Velarde said after the Yankees’ sixth victory in seven games.

Hall, briefly Blyleven’s teammate in Cleveland, expects to see Blyleven be a winner again. “He was a little rusty, but I know Bert and I know he’s going to get better,” Hall said. “We will have to deal with him again.”

Said Blyleven: “Even if I hadn’t been able to make it, it still would have been positive. I’ve enjoyed it every time I’ve gone out there. There’s no way in heck this game will ever be a negative to me.”

(Orange County Edition) In Blyleven Story, That Was Then

Here’s how the box score looked on the occasion of Bert Blyleven’s major league debut for the Minnesota Twins on June 5, 1970 . . .

MINNESOTA

ab r h bi Tovar cf 3 1 1 1 Holt lf 4 0 0 0 Oliva rf 4 0 2 1 Killebrew 3b 4 0 1 0 Reese 1b 4 0 1 0 Cardenas ss 4 0 2 0 Mitterwald c 2 0 0 0 Quilici 2b 3 1 2 0 Blyleven p 2 0 0 0 Perranoski p 0 0 0 0 Total 30 2 9 2

WASHINGTON

ab r h bi Maye rf 3 1 2 1 Comer 1b 1 0 0 0 Stroud cf 4 0 0 0 Howard lf 4 0 0 0 Epstein 1b 4 0 1 0 Allen 2b 3 0 1 0 Reichardt ph 1 0 0 0 Rodriguez 3b 4 0 0 0 Brinkman ss 2 0 0 0 French c 3 0 1 0 Cox p 1 0 0 0 Roseboro ph 1 0 0 0 Knowles p 0 0 0 0 Total 31 1 5 1

Minnesota: 2 Washington: 1

DP--Washington 2. LOB--Minnesota 4, Washington 5. 2B--Cardenas. HR--Maye (4). SB--Tovar. S--Blyleven, Cox.

Minnesota

IP H R ER BB SO Blyleven W,1-0 7 5 1 1 1 7 Perranoski S 2 0 0 0 0 0

Washington

IP H R ER BB SO Cox L,3-4 7 8 2 2 2 3 Knowles 2 1 0 0 0 0

T--2:01. A--12,818

. . . and here are the ages that night of the players who backed him in his return with the Angels Tuesday in New York:

Luis Polonia, lf--5 years, 8 months

Von Hayes, rf--11 years, 9 months

Junior Felix, cf--2 years, 8 months

Hubie Brooks, dh--13 years, 8 months