Angels Get a Helpless Feeling : Baseball: Seven-run, nine-hit third inning sends Blue Jays winging toward 10-1 victory.

Single. Double. Infield single. Single, scoring a run. Single, scoring another. Double, scoring a run. Single, scoring two. Single. Single, scoring one more run.

The SkyDome roof was closed Friday, but hits rained on the Angels in a third-inning deluge they thought would never end.

“It was the worst feeling in the world,” Angel first baseman Rene Gonzales said of watching the Toronto Blue Jays pound out nine consecutive hits in a seven-run spree that launched them to a 10-1 rout.

“I started going, ‘Here we go again, the same old thing. We’re in a hole and we don’t have the firepower to come back,’ ” said Gonzales, a former Blue Jay. “You’re out there and you can’t do anything about it.”

Mark Langston (8-6) couldn’t do anything to stop it. Although he rode out a wild spell in the first inning, when he gave up three walks and two runs, he was utterly ineffective in the third, when he gave up hits to Candy Maldonado, Pat Tabler, Pat Borders and Jeff Kent before his briefest start of the season ended.

“I felt strong and I felt like I had good stuff after the extra day’s rest, but I wasn’t able to throw it for strikes, and I got behind,” Langston said. “This is the big leagues and you’re supposed to take advantage of that, and they did. . . . They jumped all over me.”

Intent on maintaining their one-game AL East lead over the Baltimore Orioles, the Blue Jays jumped on Chuck Crim, too. Crim gave up the final five hits in the third inning as Toronto set a club record for consecutive hits and fell one short of the American League record. The barrage was one short of the Angel record for hits given up in an inning, set in the fifth inning on July 8, 1990, at Milwaukee.

The crowd of 50,408 booed when Maldonado, the 10th batter, made the first out by popping up to catcher John Orton. The Angels were too numb to react.

“It was tough, because when you’re scuffling to score runs, you know you’ve got to keep the game close,” interim Manager John Wathan said after the Angels’ fifth consecutive loss and 21st in their last 26 road games. “You know you’re going to have to put a lot of hits together, some walks, a couple of errors. . . .”

His voice trailed off. “It’s hard to watch sometimes because it’s very frustrating. We’ve had close games where we didn’t score and blowouts where we didn’t score,” he continued. “I don’t know which is worse. If it’s 2-1, you know you had chances. If it’s a blowout, you never had a chance.”

The Angels did have an early chance. They scored first off left-hander Jimmy Key (5-6) on a walk by Chad Curtis and Junior Felix’s double to left-center.

But Toronto grabbed the lead in the first, and Key--after giving up a two-out single to Gary DiSarcina in the second inning--retired the next 14 batters. “It seems like I get either a ton of support or none,” Key said.

Dave Stieb, sent from the starting rotation to the bullpen, pitched the final two innings in his first relief appearance since Aug. 16, 1988, at Chicago.

“It’s disappointing to come in here, and our offense is struggling, and give up those two runs in the first inning,” said Langston, who had pitched complete games in his previous four outings and had won three of those four. “I have to shut the door after we score, and I didn’t.”

The Blue Jays opened the floodgates, led by Roberto Alomar’s three RBIs. “When you see a teammate get a hit, you’re going to try to get another hit,” Alomar said.

They succeeded: Every starter had a hit and had scored a run by the third inning, marking the ninth time this season an Angel opponent reached double digits in runs. That happened seven times last season.

The Angels, 2-14 against left-handers, produced only five hits Friday and have 31 hits and seven runs in their last seven games.

“I don’t know if we have any answers,” Wathan said, “other than to keep going back out there. . . . I know every day I come out to the ballpark and I expect to win. I expect that from everybody on this club.”