McGwire, A’s Take Swings at Angels : Baseball: He hits two homers as Oakland beats Abbott, 4-1, and moves four games ahead in West.

Taking time out from bashing each other to bash the Angels in a 4-1 victory Thursday, the Oakland Athletics matched their biggest lead of the season in the American League West and became the first major league team to win 70 games.

Mark McGwire victimized Jim Abbott with two home runs--as many homers as the Angels have hit in their last 79 innings--to support Mike Moore (12-9), who gave up three hits and retired the last 16 batters.

Jose Canseco, who on Monday was lambasted by Terry Steinbach and others for leaving the ballpark early and later exchanged apologies with Steinbach, singled and scored on McGwire’s second home run, then singled to drive home Jerry Browne in the eighth inning with Oakland’s final run.

“They have to play in another league,” Angel designated hitter Luis Polonia said of his former Oakland teammates. “They’re too much. Their players get hurt, but they get replacements who do the job until the other guys come back, and then the trouble (for opponents) gets worse.

“Two home runs by McGwire--that’s the Oakland A’s. That’s how they always do it.”

The A’s have always won with fireworks, some on the field and some off. Forgetting personal differences has become as much a part of their daily routine as taking batting practice.

“In between the lines, there’s a game we have to play and we know we have to go out there and win,” said McGwire, who lined a 1-and-0 pitch from Abbott into the Oakland Coliseum’s left-field seats leading off the second inning. In the seventh, he powered a first-pitch fastball upstairs in left to increase his home run total to 37.

“That’s something (A’s Manager) Tony (La Russa) does very well, get us ready for games,” McGwire added.

Abbott gave up only four hits, but two of them were to McGwire. He has yielded three or fewer earned runs in 16 of his 21 starts, including each of his last seven, but has a 4-12 record to show for it.

“I try not to look at my record any more,” said Abbott, whose 2.90 earned-run average ranks among the league leaders. “It’s frustrating. I hate it and there’s not much I can do about it. I thought I threw the ball pretty well today, but I got a couple of pitches up (to McGwire) and he’s one of the best power hitters around, so he took advantage of it. You’ve got to give a lot of credit to Mark.”

Junior Felix’s eighth homer of the season and second in two games tied the score in the fourth, but McGwire put it beyond the Angels’ reach in the seventh.

“If they get the pitchers to do the job, no question, they’ll win it,” said Felix, who lined an 0-and-1 pitch from Moore into the left-field seats for his eighth homer of the season. “If they get the pitching together with the hitting, they’ll win a lot of games.”

They’ve won a lot already, but La Russa is hardly complacent.

“I won’t even look at that,” he said. “You can’t win a pennant with 70 wins and you can’t win the pennant in mid-August. I look at it as winning the first game of the California series. If it were today that we won 90, I’d have been real excited. You want to get to 90 as soon as you can and then look up and see where you are.”

“To have a winning year, you’ve got to have a lot of pieces. If all you have is a couple of starting pitchers and a couple of hitters, you’re not going to do it. Defense is the reason we won the Chicago series. The reason we’re winning is, it can come from any part--the starters, the relievers, the defense or the hitters.”