Angels Get Another Bad Bounce, Fall in 12 : Baseball: Throw gets away from catcher Fitzgerald and White Sox escape with 3-2 victory.

As Chad Curtis caught Shawn Abner’s fly ball in short center field and hurled the ball home, Angel catcher Mike Fitzgerald had a split second to gauge that it was on target. He had another split second to brace for a collision with George Bell, who was steaming in from third.

“I had home plate blocked. He wasn’t going to score unless he got through me,” Fitzgerald said. “As the throw was getting closer, it looked like it might make it in the air. It was a good, strong, accurate throw. It should have been three feet longer or five feet shorter.”

Landing as it did, a foot or so to Fitzgerald’s left, it produced an unexpected hop that glanced off Fitzgerald’s glove and enabled Bell to score, giving the White Sox a 3-2 victory Wednesday night in 12 innings.

This defeat, the Angels’ sixth in succession and 14th in their last 16 games, was more difficult to accept than the others. Another splendid pitching performance by Jim Abbott went unrewarded, as did an unlikely ninth-inning rally against former Angel Kirk McCaskill and relievers Scott Radinsky and Bobby Thigpen.

“When we got those two runs in the ninth, I said, ‘This is it. We’re finished with all our bad luck.’ To lose is disappointing, it’s frustrating, it’s all those things,” said Rene Gonzales, whose two-out, pinch-single in the ninth gave the Angels a 2-1 lead that Mark Eichhorn was unable to hold in the bottom of the ninth. “I thought everything bad that could happen had happened a week ago, but stuff still happens.”

Mark Langston, sent in to run for designated hitter Hubie Brooks in the ninth, scored the tying run on Gonzales’ single and became the first Angel pitcher to score a run since Gary Nolan in 1977.

Langston came in at second base after Brooks was hit by a pitch and advanced on Jose Gonzalez’s fielder’s choice grounder. Langston tagged up and took third on Gary Gaetti’s fly to center and scored on Gonzales’ single to center off Thigpen.

Because interim Manager John Wathan had used every available position player, Langston in the 10th inning became the first Angel pitcher to come to bat since Nolan Ryan hit against Oakland on Oct. 4, 1972. Like Ryan, Langston struck out swinging. He struck out swinging with runners on second and third and two out in the 12th inning, a situation created when Luis Polonia beat out a grounder to second, Von Hayes was intentionally walked and the two pulled off a double steal.

Polonia stole second and third to match his personal high of four in a game, tying a club record set Sept. 9, 1989, by Devon White.

Wathan said he chose Langston “because he’s a good athlete and the fastest pitcher we had. . . . He came up in a couple of key situations and unfortunately wasn’t able to get it done.”

McCaskill gave up three hits over eight innings. Abbott, winner of one game in his last 11 starts, gave up a run in the sixth on a triple by Robin Ventura and an error by third baseman Gary Gaetti on Frank Thomas’ grounder.

The two-run ninth put him in position to win, but Thomas’ RBI-single off Eichhorn took care of that. Steve Frey (2-1) came in to pitch the 11th and retired the first four hitters he faced before walking Bell with one out in the 12th. Craig Grebeck singled to left, moving Bell to third, and the Angels walked Steve Sax intentionally to bring up Abner.

Abner, released by the Angels during spring training and signed by the White Sox April 1, worked the count to 1 and 2 against Frey.

“I was expecting him to throw that little slurve he has because he confused me with it on the 1-and-1 pitch I fouled back,” Abner said. “He jammed me. I was lucky the throw was short-hopped and (Fitzgerald) couldn’t pick it up. . . .

FINAL STRAW: Baseball owners gave straw-vote approval to the sale of the Seattle Mariners, and formal approval is expected today. C5