A’s Knock Angels Out of First

For 17 unexpected days, the Angels looked down on the rest of the American League West. It was 17 more days than anyone could have dreamed possible and when it was time to fall, an old foe put the Angels back in their place.

It was the last-place Oakland Athletics, the last major league team to win 10 games, who finally knocked them out of first. On the 18th day, the Chicago White Sox lead the second-place Angels by one-half game.

In the end, the Angels went without much of a struggle, succumbing meekly to the A’s, 6-2, before 42,482 at Anaheim Stadium on Saturday night.

“I thought we gave it a pretty good run,” Angel Manager Buck Rodgers said. “We were up there for a couple of weeks. We might be there again. Who knows? No, I didn’t expect us to be in first place wire-to-wire.”

There were simply too many weak links to keep the Angels ahead of the pack. The two main ingredients in the club’s best start since 1986--pitching and hitting--were absent against the A’s.

Four Angel pitchers gave up 11 hits, including five for extra bases.

The hitting, so good earlier in the season, was punchless. The lone exception was J.T. Snow’s two-run home run in the first inning, his first homer since April 22.

Saturday’s game figured to be a battle between starting pitchers, and it was. Mark Langston and Bob Welch battled to keep runners off base and runs off the scoreboard.

For a while, it seemed neither would last long.

It was clear from the start that this was not going to be a typical Langston effort. He struggled throughout his 5 2/3 innings, giving up four runs, nine hits and five walks--all season highs.

He looked nothing like the pitcher who entered the game with a 2.30 earned-run average and had given up an average of three hits in his three victories.

“He didn’t have command of his curveball,” Rodgers said. “It was basically fastball and changeup. He couldn’t get by their big right-handed hitters. They jumped on him right away and that was not real good.”

Welch wasn’t much better in the early innings. But after the first, the A’s had a 3-2 lead.

Mark McGwire’s two-run double down the left-field line and Dale Sveum’s run-scoring single put the A’s ahead, 3-0.

Welch countered by giving up three consecutive hits in the first. Only the fact that catcher Terry Steinbach threw out Luis Polonia trying to steal second kept the A’s ahead.

After Chad Curtis singled, Snow slammed a 1-and-0 pitch over the center-field wall for his seventh homer of the season.

Welch settled down after that, retiring nine of the next 10 batters. Perhaps that’s why Rodgers asked plate umpire Joe Brinkman to check Welch’s glove for a foreign substance before the start of the fifth.

“A couple of our guys told me he used pine tar,” Rodgers said.

Langston, too, seemed to find a groove after his rocky start. But the A’s caught up with him again in the fifth on Ruben Sierra’s solo homer and he couldn’t make it out of the sixth.

After throwing 119 pitches, Langston (3-1) gave way to Chuck Crim, who snuffed an Oakland scoring chance by striking out McGwire with the bases loaded.

Welch (4-2) stuck around until he gave up a one-out single to Gary DiSarcina in the seventh. Rick Honeycutt relieved Welch, who gave up two runs, seven hits, walked one and struck out five.

Welch has an 11-2 record against the Angels.

Torey Lovullo, starting in place of Rene Gonzales at third base, did his part to keep the Angels close. After letting McGwire’s first-inning double get past him, Lovullo made two diving stops on Steinbach’s hard-hit grounder in the first and Dave Henderson’s smash in the fifth. He also made a deft barehanded pickup and a strong throw on Brent Gates’ bunt try in the fourth.