Abbott Homered Off Hook : Baseball: After pitcher leaves because of pulled muscle, Morris and Tingley rally Angels to 2-1 victory over Tigers.

His pulled rib-cage muscle hurt too much for him to laugh, so Jim Abbott settled for a weak smile in noting that his Angel teammates did not score until after he was forced to leave Saturday’s game.

“Maybe they just don’t like me,” Abbott said, pretending to be angry. “Maybe they were so happy I got hurt, they started hitting home runs.”

In truth, they were deflated when he departed after 3 2/3 innings, but they weren’t defeated. Back-to-back home runs by John Morris and Ron Tingley in the fifth inning absolved Abbott of a possible loss, and strong relief pitching by Chuck Crim and Joe Grahe secured a 2-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers before 39,461 at Tiger Stadium.

“When Jimmy got hurt, that took the air out of us. We always count on him to give us six, seven quality innings,” said Tingley, who entered the game with four home runs in his career. “But when John hit his homer we said, ‘We’re not out of this.’ When I hit mine, it was ‘Hey, we’ve got to hold them now.’ Incredible, isn’t it?”

As incredible, perhaps, as the Angels’ winning two consecutive games after losing 11 in a row. “To win a 2-1 game in this ballpark with the club they have, you know you’ve done a hell of a job,” said Crim (2-2), who retired all seven he faced. “This is a scary park to pitch in. I’ve seen some routine fly balls go out of here.”

The homers by Morris and Tingley against Bill Gullickson (9-6) weren’t routine, but they were as improbable as the 4-11 record Abbott will take into the All-Star break.

Abbott left trailing, 1-0, after he gave up a double to Mickey Tettleton and a run-scoring single to Mark Carreon and then doubled over in pain.

“I’m not really sure how I did it. It was one of those funny things where everything happened so fast, it was all of a sudden,” said Abbott, who threw one pitch to Skeeter Barnes before realizing he couldn’t continue.

“I think it happened on the play Carreon hit the ball up the middle (and Abbott unsuccessfully tried to backhand the ball). It started hurting a little bit and it wasn’t bad when I was throwing my warm-up pitches, but when I went full blast on my first pitch to Barnes, it hurt a lot.”

Almost as much as it hurt to leave after his shortest outing of the season.

“It was hard to come in here and not be able to go out there and pitch with a great crowd and a close ballgame,” said Abbott, whose parents and wife were in the stands with friends from his hometown of Flint, Mich. “I hate coming out of a game. I feel like a sissy. But I just couldn’t do it.”

Morris, added to the starting lineup after Luis Polonia was sidelined because of a sore left hand, joked that his home run off the facing of the second deck in right fulfilled his annual quota. It was his first homer since last Sept. 1, when he was with the Philadelphia Phillies, and only his second since Sept. 2, 1989. When Tingley copied him, the Angels had back-to-back homers for the first time since Aug. 17, when Wally Joyner and Gary Gaetti homered against the Seattle Mariners.

“It’s only the eighth homer of my career, so it’s kind of an embarrassing thing to talk about,” said Morris, who hadn’t started a game since June 3. “I think I can help this team in other ways than by hitting one home run a year. I told the guys, ‘I’m done now for the year.’ ”

He was delighted that his annual homer helped Abbott.

“I feel better for that reason than for my own satisfaction, to be honest with you,” said Morris, who was looking for a breaking pitch and got one on a 1-and-0 count. “When he gave up that run and left, it popped into my mind: ‘We might not score and he’d get the loss.’ After Tingley hit that homer I was really happy he got off the hook.”

Interim Manager John Wathan was so happy with his team’s first two-game winning streak since June 26-27 that he didn’t dwell--too long--on the seven runners the Angels stranded and how they might have broken the game open if they had scored with runners on first and third with one out in the seventh and the bases loaded in the eighth. He also refused to worry about Abbott’s pulled muscle, saying he will move Abbott to fifth in the rotation to give him additional time to heal and will consider alternatives, if necessary, after the break.

“It looks like we’re a little more in sync right now,” he said. “At times during the streak when we pitched well, we didn’t hit well, and when we hit well we didn’t get good pitching. We’re a little more on track now for what we’re looking for.”