Fielder Makes It Perfect : Baseball: He hits homer in Tigers’ 5-2 victory over the Angels and now has at least one in every park in the American League.

Cecil Fielder is not quite the fixture on the highlight shows that he has been the past couple of years. This time last year, he had 27 home runs. Two years ago, in the season he hit 51, he was at 31 by now.

Fielder hit his 20th of the season against the Angels on Thursday night, a two-run shot off Mark Langston in the first inning of the Detroit Tigers’ 5-2 victory before 20,900 at Anaheim Stadium.

Still, there was something special about this one. Though Fielder has hit 115 home runs over the past three seasons, it was his first in Anaheim Stadium, his last holdout among American League parks.

It came on his 68th plate appearance in Anaheim. In the eighth inning, he barely missed his second homer when his drive to left stayed foul, to the seeming disappointment of the crowd.

Detroit held a 3-2 lead from the second through the sixth innings, with Langston and Mark Leiter shutting down each other’s offenses. But the Tigers opened it up in the seventh when Tony Phillips’ two-out, two-run double drove in Chad Kreuter, who also had doubled, and Gary Pettis, who walked.

“To me, that was the ballgame,” Langston said. “At 3-2, we have a shot. That was ridiculous.”

Langston (9-8) failed in his first bid for his 10th victory, giving up four earned runs on six hits in eight innings.

He faulted himself for giving up Kreuter’s double and the walk to Pettis. “You can’t do that,” he said. “That was stupid, walking him. I’ve got to make him put the ball in play. They should fine me for that.”

Fielder, who has led the majors in homers and runs batted in the past two seasons, is back in the pack in the home run race, trailing Mark McGwire by eight.

He is bidding to become the first player since Babe Ruth to lead the majors in RBIs for three consecutive seasons. Fielder got his 77th and 78th Thursday, extending major league-leading total. His closest competition in the RBI standings is McGwire with 70.

In the first inning, Langston, who had walked Travis Fryman with two out, fell behind Fielder, 2-and-0. Fielder sent the next pitch into the stands behind the foul pole in left.

“I challenged him. I went after him. He took me deep,” said Langston, who called the pitch a “fastball, right in his loop-zone.

“I don’t know if it was a mistake or not. He just got it.”

The Angels followed a first-inning homer with one of their own for the second night in a row. Luis Sojo’s homer was his fifth of the season and third of the month, but it was a solo shot, and the Angels trailed, 2-1.

Detroit scored a gift run in the second inning when Rene Gonzales and Gary DiSarcina made errors on the same play to allow Skeeter Barnes to score from second base on an infield grounder. With runners on first and second, Tony Phillips grounded to third base, but Gonzales muffed it. DiSarcina, the shortstop, picked it up, but with Gonzales partially obstructing him, he made a desperate, off-balance throw to first, and it bounced wide of Lee Stevens.

Langston prevented more damage by striking out Dan Gladden.

The Angels trimmed the lead to 3-2 when Von Hayes scored on Stevens’ sacrifice fly in the second inning.

Leiter (7-4) pitched seven innings, giving up two runs on five hits and shutting out the Angels over his final five innings.

He had ended a five-game losing streak on Saturday with a victory over Oakland, and his outing against the Angels marked the first time he has finished six innings since June 13, when he had a complete-game victory over the Orioles.