Big Plays All in a Day’s Work for Snow : Angels: Rookie comes up with key contributions--homer and ninth-inning grab--in 7-6 victory.

J.T. Snow wore a thick coat of Anaheim Stadium topsoil on the front of his jersey and the legs of his pants. His eye black was smudged and his left leg was propped on a chair in front of him, an icebag resting on his sore shin.

“I feel like I played a football game,” he said after the Angels went toe to toe with the Oakland Athletics for a victory Sunday at Anaheim Stadium.

“I’ll tell you what, it was hot out there.”

Rene Gonzales, standing nearby, said: “It would have been hotter if we had lost.”

Snow nodded in agreement.

“We worked too hard to lose that game,” said Snow, who fouled a pitch off his shin early in the game. “We kept battling back and battling back.”

Sunday’s game was won in the trenches, with Snow helping with the dirty work in a 7-6 10-inning victory in front of 23,089. It was difficult to know which was Snow’s more important contribution--his fourth-inning home run or his ninth-inning stab of what appeared to be an RBI single by Kevin Seitzer.

Both plays kept the Angels in the game and gave them much-needed momentum on a day when they could have easily folded their tents and accepted a loss. Both plays were prime candidates for late-night highlight reels. Both stood out in a game filled with gaffes, blunders and gawd-awful pitching.

When he homered off Oakland starter Shawn Hillegas to lead off the fourth inning, it pushed the Angels into a 3-2 lead and gave the rookie first baseman another shot of confidence. He said he’s only recently become comfortable again after his batting average nose-dived from .365 to .270 on a seven-game trip.

On Friday, he finally snapped an 0-for-16 slide with an infield hit. He followed that with a two-run homer off Bob Welch on Saturday.

Sunday’s solo shot fell into the fifth row of the right-field stands and was Snow’s team-leading eighth of the season. Of those eight, seven have come at Anaheim Stadium.

“I feel more relaxed here,” Snow said. “On the road everything is a new experience. It’s taking a little getting used to. I see the ball a lot better at Anaheim.”

On the Angels’ 2-5 trip to Boston, Cleveland and New York, Snow saw few hittable pitches, though they all looked good to him at the time.

“I think I just got into a funk where I wasn’t swinging at good pitches,” he said. “I was up there thinking I could hit anything and you can’t do that. You’ve got to take what the pitchers are giving you. For a while, they weren’t giving me anything to hit.”

Snow’s average still isn’t what it once was--down to .267 after going one for five Sunday--but he’s feeling confident again. And that means a lot to him.

“I was down a little bit on the last road trip,” Snow said. “It plays on the mind a little bit. But with the start I had, I knew I could get back to the way I was. Now, I’m getting back to taking what the pitchers are giving me.”

Hitting comes and goes over the course of the season, according to Manager Buck Rodgers. “I don’t think anybody thought J.T. would hit .400 this season,” Rodgers said.

But unlike his predecessor at first base, Lee Stevens, Snow appears to suffer no slumps when it comes to fielding. His leaping catch of Seitzer’s line drive in the ninth prevented one run from scoring and almost wound up being a double play. Lance Blankenship barely beat Snow’s diving tag with a quick slide back to first.

“It wasn’t that close,” Snow said. “I took a bad angle on him. I kind of ran at him, then ran toward the bag.”

Nevertheless, it kept the A’s from taking the lead and gave the Angels a chance to pull out the victory.