Blyleven Is Still Stunning : Angels: He gives up two hits and one run through six innings of 4-1 victory over Rangers.

To be sure, he didn’t detract from the attention focused on Nolan Ryan. Bert Blyleven walked under the stands instead of across the field after he completed his warm-up pitches and headed for the Angels’ dugout.

“I looked when they put his number up on the wall,” Blyleven said of Ryan’s induction into the Angels’ Hall of Fame, “but today was his day.”

Blyleven made Tuesday his day, too. Continuing his astonishing comeback from rotator cuff surgery, Blyleven struck out seven and held the Rangers to two hits over six innings in leading the Angels to a 4-1 victory, the 282nd triumph of his career.

The crowd of 51,401, the largest at Anaheim Stadium this season, thoroughly enjoyed the taped images of Ryan’s past pitching gems and the spectacle presented to them Tuesday by Blyleven (3-0). The 41-year-old right-hander left after six innings only because he had thrown 98 pitches, his highest total in his five starts this season. Scott Bailes pitched two-thirds of an inning and Joe Grahe pitched the final 2 1/3 innings to earn his second save of the season and preserve the Angels’ fifth victory in six games.

“If you can take just a little thunder away from Nolan, Bert did that,” interim Manager John Wathan said. “They’ve both put up some numbers in their careers. This shows you the concentration and drive Bert Blyleven has, after all the hoopla, to pitch as well as he did.”

Even Ryan, who will pitch tonight, got a kick out of watching Blyleven. “I don’t like the fact that we lost,” Ryan said, “but I thought it was kind of neat to see Bert pitch this well on a night of nostalgia.”

His outing was vintage Blyleven: good control, a nasty curveball and a home run against him.

Blyleven, who now has more victories than teammates Jim Abbott (2-9) and Chuck Finley (2-5), held Texas hitless until Jeff Huson’s one-out single in the fifth. He held the Rangers scoreless until two out in the sixth, when Juan Gonzalez--who was born in October, 1969, several months after Blyleven made his professional debut with Sarasota--homered in the sixth. The homer, the 417th yielded by Blyleven, ended his bid to tie Ryan and Tom Seaver for eighth place on the shutout list.

By then, though, the Angels had given Blyleven a three-run cushion. Luis Polonia led off the bottom of the first with a double to left-center, took third on Luis Sojo’s deft sacrifice to the third-base side and scored on Von Hayes’ fly ball to center. Ron Tingley padded the lead to 3-0 in the second, with a two-out, two-run home run of Jose Guzman (6-4). It was Tingley’s second home run of the season.

After Gonzalez’s homer made it 3-1, the Angels re-established a three-run difference in the bottom of the sixth, when Hubie Brooks doubled and scored on Gary Gaetti’s single to center. “Getting an early lead was very important to the team and to Bert. It gave him leeway to come after guys,” Tingley said. “That curveball was a great thing to catch, let me tell you.”

Blyleven knew his fastball would be the key to his success Tuesday against the Rangers, a good fastball-hitting team.

“I needed the fastball away and I had it in the bullpen, so it was a matter of establishing it in the game,” he said, after improving his career record against the Rangers (and their forerunner, the Washington Senators) to 20-13. “I just try to get strike one and just get ahead in the count. That puts me at an advantage, where I might be able to miss with a pitch and not get hurt.”

The Rangers were hurt by their inability to score in the second. Gonzalez had led off the inning with a bouncer that Gaetti dropped for one error and then threw away for a second error, his 16th of the season and one short of his 1991 season total. Gonzalez tagged and took third on Kevin Reimer’s fly to right, and Blyleven seemed to be struggling after he walked Brian Downing. But Blyleven slipped a third strike past Geno Petralli and got Huson on a swinging strikeout.

All in all, the night was a success for both featured pitchers.

“Nolan has been an outstanding competitor throughout his career, and I feel I have, too,” Blyleven said. “I really missed the game when I got operated on. What drove me to come back was the challenge of facing major league hitters. That’s the one thing I’ll miss when I’m done.”