Angels Make It Their Night, Hand Ryan, Rangers 6-1 Loss : Baseball: Finley goes the distance as they win for 15th time in 20 games.

It was a Nolan Ryan night at Arlington Stadium, but it was not Nolan Ryan’s night.

Drawn by Ryan’s start, 36,933 fans came out Saturday night, and many endured a downpour during a 42-minute rain delay.

They saw Ryan give up more hits than he has in any game in more than a year. The Angels got eight hits and scored six runs--four earned--before Ryan left after 5 1/3 innings of a 6-1 defeat. It was the Angels’ 15th victory in 20 games.

It simply was not Ryan’s night. This one belonged to Chuck Finley, whose family and friends usually make the 4 1/2-hour drive from his hometown of Monroe, La., only to see him lose. He hadn’t won here since 1988, and the last three times he has pitched in Arlington, he has gone against Ryan.

“Usually, I go back to the hotel, and they don’t know what to say to me,” Finley said. “It’s, ‘Well, Ryan was tough tonight, huh?’ ”

This time it was Finley who was tough, pitching a seven-hitter for his first complete-game victory of the season. He struck out a season-high 10.

“The last three or four years I’ve pitched here, this is the first time my mom and dad have stayed past the fourth inning,” he said. “Every time I get pulled, they leave. I know all things change with time, and I said, ‘Why not tonight?’ ”

Finley (4-9) escaped two bases-loaded jams without giving up a run. In the seventh, after the Rangers loaded the bases on Von Hayes’ error on Rafael Palmeiro’s pop fly, Finley struck out Ruben Sierra and Juan Gonzalez to end the inning.

“Looks like Finley is back,” interim Manager John Wathan said. “That’s two great outings in a row. The seventh inning was some kind of inning for him. After that error in right, he struck out the middle of their order.”

Finley won back-to-back starts for the first time this season, and he did it while being caught by new teammate Greg Myers for the first time.

“He didn’t miss a beat,” Finley said. “I thought he’d been catching me a long time. I was thinking right along with him.”

It was a frustrating outing for Ryan (5-4), who after starting the season winless over his first 11 outings, had won his last five decisions. But it proved a game in which he would hit two batters, make an error on a pickoff attempt and need 104 pitches to get 16 outs.

The last team to get eight hits off Ryan was the Cleveland Indians, on April 26, 1991.

The most exasperating parts of the night for Ryan might have been things like staying loose through the rain delay. And watching Rene Gonzales score the eventual winning run run from first base in the second inning on a stolen base, a throwing error by catcher Ivan Rodriguez and center fielder Juan Gonzalez’s lackadaisical retrieval of the ball as Gonzales rounded third and surprised him by taking off for home.

“It was just one of those nights when things didn’t work out,” Ryan said. “It was ugly all the way around. When you play the way we did tonight, you deserve to be beat.”

Rodriguez has an outstanding arm, but the Angels stole four bases against him--more than any team ever has in a game against him.

Though Rodriguez made two errors that allowed runs to score, part of the blame might go to fielders not covering the bag in time.

“You don’t want to run scared. You want to make them make the play,” said Gonzales, who went two for three, scoring two runs and driving in another.

Gonzales’ aggressive baserunning on the second-inning play was reminiscent of the Angels’ 4-3 victory last Sunday over Detroit, when he scored the winning run from first on Hayes’ bases-loaded single.

The Angels scored another run on Rodriguez’s error in the fifth, as Luis Polonia stole third with two out. When he took off for third, Rodriguez tried to gun him down, but third baseman Dean Palmer couldn’t get to the ball, and Polonia came on around to score.