Angels Can’t Manage to Win for Wathan : Baseball: Just as his term as interim manager began, it ends with a defeat in Baltimore, 6-4.

John Wathan’s term as the Angels’ interim manager began with a loss in Baltimore and ended the same way.

“It was deja vu all over again,” Wathan said, forcing a smile.

From that first defeat through a 6-4 loss Wednesday night at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Wathan lost 49 games and won 36. He lost his cool occasionally--he was ejected three times--and lost his patience more often than that, but he rarely lost his sense of humor or lost sight of his standards.

“I don’t think you’re ever satisfied in this job. You always think you could do better,” said Wathan, who showed his dissatisfaction over Chad Curtis’ failure to read a hit-and-run sign in the fifth inning. That left Luis Sojo easy pickings to be thrown out stealing third and kept the Angels from routing Oriole starter Mike Mussina.

Wathan took over for the injured Buck Rodgers when the team was 19-20 and 4 1/2 games out of the American League West lead. Wathan, who in turn yielded to pitching coach Marcel Lachemann when his father died earlier this month, hands back to Rodgers a team that is in sixth place, 18 1/2 games out.

“We’re only (4 1/2) games out of fourth place and I think that’s a good goal to shoot for,” said Wathan, whose career managerial record with the Royals and Angels is 323-318. “Like I was telling these guys before the game (in a team meeting), we were .500 last year, but we finished last. Fourth place is better, even if it’s not with a .500 record.”

The Orioles’ goals are more lofty than fourth place. A five-home run barrage off Julio Valera--also the starter in Wathan’s first game, May 22--Chuck Crim and Mike Butcher enabled the Orioles to stay in second place in the AL East, two games behind the Blue Jays.

“This could carry over,” said Randy Milligan, who hit a solo homer in the sixth and put Baltimore ahead with a two-run shot in the seventh against Butcher (2-1). “Everybody looks for that one big hit to take the pressure off and tonight we got it. We’ll soon see if it carries over.”

A bases-empty homer by Mike Devereaux in the third inning and Milligan’s homer leading off the sixth cut the Angels’ lead to 4-2, and Chris Hoiles narrowed it to 4-3 with a leadoff homer in the seventh off Crim. After Bill Ripken hit a line out to left fielder Luis Polonia, Wathan summoned Butcher, who walked Brady Anderson on four pitches.

Anderson stole second--his 43rd steal of the season--before Milligan launched Butcher’s 3-and-2 pitch to left.

“It was frustrating because all those homers were solos,” Milligan said. “Everybody was mad and everybody was saying, ‘If I could have got on for (Devereaux) we could have tied it,’ or ‘If I’d been on for Chris, that would have tied it.’ The one time we hit one with someone on, it was like a big weight was lifted off our shoulders.”

Devereaux transferred the weight onto the Angels’ shoulders when he lined Butcher’s 1-and-0 pitch to left, sparking roars from the sellout crowd of 46,023.

“I just didn’t do my job tonight,” Butcher said. “I won’t sugarcoat it. But I’ll be back. I’m not going to sit here and cry about it. I learned from it. I was trying to overdo everything and I wasn’t hitting my spots. I was getting the ball up.

“The team would have liked to win because it was John’s last day as interim manager, but I didn’t help the cause any.”

Just as in Wathan’s first game, Gregg Olson saved Wednesday’s victory. The series win was the Orioles’ first since Aug. 2-4, when they swept three games from the Detroit Tigers. Since then, they had lost four series and tied one.

“We played good on this trip,” Polonia said of the Angels’ 6-7 record on their longest trip of the season. We lost all those games in Oakland and bounced back.

“What we had in mind was to win this one for John. He really deserved it. He did a hell of a job to bring us back in the second half. It would have been nice to say, ‘Bye,’ with a win, but that’s the game.”