Angels Waste 5-3 Lead, and Lose to Blue Jays, 9-5

The sound of a standing ovation ringing in his ears, Gary Gaetti waved his arms over his head and ran to the Angels’ dugout as the Toronto Blue Jays finished batting in the top of the eighth inning Tuesday.

Spoiling this happy scenario was the sarcasm behind the ovation, which was awarded in memory of two non-plays by Gaetti that allowed Toronto to score the go-ahead run in an eventual 9-5 victory over the Angels at Anaheim Stadium.

Remembering that Gaetti had dropped the ball at first base after Joe Carter was caught in a rundown--and remembering his futile wave at Jeff Kent’s bad-hop double that scored Carter with the decisive run--many fans left from the crowd of 21,581 gave Gaetti that mock applause for making two routine putouts in the eighth inning. Gaetti smiled, but the Angels could hardly be happy about squandering a 5-3 lead they had built against Jack Morris (12-3) by scoring five times in the fifth inning.

“I thought the fans were a little brutal there,” Angel interim Manager John Wathan said of the crowd’s reaction to Gaetti’s failure to corral Kent’s spinning shot. “I don’t know of any ballplayer alive who could make that play. That was one of the most amazing spin shots I’ve ever seen. He went for the ball and it kicked six or seven feet to his right. You can’t read that off the bat. I don’t think anybody in the game can make that play.”

Said third baseman Rene Gonzales: “He (Kent) cued it off the end of the bat. You could see, when the ball was thrown back in, the umpire threw it right out because it was gashed.”

Gaetti simply said: “It took about a 180-degree turn. There’s no good way to play that ball.”

As for Carter knocking the ball out of his glove, the Angel first baseman said: “I don’t know how he knocked it out of there, (but) I felt the glove bend backward.”

Kent, a Huntington Beach Edison High graduate who drove in four runs, began the Angels’ downward slide by hitting a three-run home run in the fourth inning to give the Blue Jays a 3-0 lead against starter Julio Valera.

Valera struggled again in the fifth, giving up two singles and a walk to Dave Winfield that loaded the bases for John Olerud. But he escaped with a flourish: Olerud popped up to shallow center and center fielder Junior Felix threw White out at the plate.

That seemed to inspire the Angels, who had five consecutive hits and six overall in the bottom of the fifth to take a 5-3 lead. Chad Curtis began the rally with his seventh homer of the season and third against the Blue Jays, a shot to left on a 2-and-2 pitch.

Gonzales singled and Gaetti beat out a bouncer to third; Mike Fitzgerald’s bunt went for a hit when Morris’ throw pulled Roberto Alomar off the bag and loaded the bases. Gary DiSarcina lined an 0-and-2 pitch to right to cut Toronto’s lead to 3-2 and move Gaetti to third and Fitzgerald to second. Luis Polonia’s grounder to short scored Gaetti.

Luis Sojo kept the inning going with a single to left, scoring Fitzgerald easily and scoring DiSarcina ahead of a late throw from Candy Maldonado. Felix then grounded to second, where Alomar triple-pumped before throwing to first. Felix was ruled safe on interference by Morris, a call the pitcher hotly disputed, but that didn’t cost him because Felix was caught stealing with Von Hayes at bat.

But the Blue Jays were relentless. In the sixth, Pat Borders accounted for two more with a two-run home run, and Tom Quinlan recorded his first major league RBIs with a two-run double in the ninth off Mark Eichhorn.

In winning, the Blue Jays extended their American League East lead over Baltimore to four games.

“They’ve got some good hitters, and they hit them where we weren’t,” Eichhorn said. “I was battling, getting some balls on the ground, but they just weren’t in the right spots.”

Morris won his eighth consecutive decision despite a less than overpowering eight-hit, seven-inning performance, and Duane Ward earned his ninth save. Chuck Crim (4-3), who had retired 21 consecutive batters before Carter led off the seventh with a single to right, took the loss.

“They’re an explosive ballclub,” Wathan said of the Blue Jays. “What I liked is we scored five runs (in the fifth) and made a tremendous comeback against a good ballclub. As it turned out, we couldn’t hold them down.”