Strike 2, You’re, uh, Out : Baseball: Umpire’s gaffe punctuates series that drives McRae to drink. Royals defeat Angels in finale, 7-1.

Royal Manager Hal McRae walked to his refrigerator Thursday after Kansas City’s 7-1 victory over the Angels, poured vodka into a plastic tumbler, then added a dash of cranberry juice for color.

“I need a stiff one after this series,” McRae said. “I’m telling you, I’ve seen things the last few days here that I’ve never seen in all of my born days.

“It got crazier every game. I felt like giving myself the game ball just for being able to stick around to the end.”

And if it wasn’t painful enough for McRae and Angel Manager Buck Rodgers to watch their pitching in the four-game series, they also had to tolerate the umpiring.

“It was unusual, let me leave at that,” Rodgers said. “I’ve got a little more patience than Hal, but that didn’t mean I liked it any better.”

The umpiring crew of Joe Brinkman, Derryl Cousins, Tim McClelland and Gary Cederstrom managed to upstage the game Thursday, with 26,409 fans at Royals Stadium looking on in disbelief.

It happened in the fifth inning, with two outs and Royal left fielder Kevin McReynolds at the plate. Angel pitcher Mark Langston (9-2) fell behind in the count, two balls and one strike, then looked at the scoreboard. It read 2-2. Langston checked with Cederstrom, who assured him that the scoreboard was correct.

Langston’s next pitch was a called strike. McReynolds glanced downward, tapped the bat against his spikes, then looked up and saw everyone running off the field.

“I was wondering where everyone was going,” McReynolds said. “I definitely knew it wasn’t three strikes, but it didn’t seem like anyone else did.”

Langston and catcher John Orton stopped in front of the Angel dugout, asking one another if there really had been three strikes. McReynolds refused to leave the batter’s box, asking Cederstrom what was going on.

“Langston and Orton stood there saying, ‘That’s only two strikes,’ ” Rodgers said. “I said, ‘Come on, get in here! Get in here! Don’t broadcast it.’ ”

McRae, who had been ejected from the two previous games, with a different player joining him each night, walked out to home plate. Soon, the entire umpiring crew gathered.

“We got confused in the dugout ourselves,” Royal coach Jamie Quirk said. “We thought, ‘Hey, maybe we screwed up.’ But when Mac went out there and wasn’t ejected right away, we knew we must have been right.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

Cederstrom, realizing his mistake, had to summon the Angels back onto the field. They grumbled, the fans cheered and Cederstrom managed to embarrass himself further by throwing the baseball off the side of first baseman J.T. Snow’s head while Snow trotted by.

“He thought I was Langston,” Snow said. “He yelled, ‘Mark!’ and then the ball was coming at my head. I mean, that guy had some problems.”

Langston took his warm-up pitches as if another inning had started, and one pitch later, got a grounder from McReynolds to end the inning. This time, for real.

“It was bizarre,” Langston said. “There was so much confusion, no one knew what was going on. It was typical of this game today.”

It was a zany afternoon for Langston, who lost for the first time since May 8. He yielded a season-high 10 hits and four runs--three earned--in seven innings. He also made a rare error in the second inning when he fielded a bunt by Jose Lind, pivoted and threw the ball wildly. Before long, the Angels were down, 4-0.

“I made so many stupid mistakes,” Langston said. “That was an unbelievably stupid play on the bunt. I tried to be like Superman, and that was the difference in the game.”

The Angels’ only hope to avoid a loss was a torrential downpour, considering Royal starter Kevin Appier (9-4) was on the mound. It finally rained in the bottom of the sixth inning, with the 31-minute delay knocking Appier out.

It didn’t help. The Royals scorched reliever Doug Linton in the eighth inning for three runs, including an inside-the-park homer by Wally Joyner.

The Royals, earning a split in the series, batted .383 in the four games, accumulating 54 hits, including 14 Thursday. How bad was it? Gary Gaetti had more extra-base hits this series, three, than he had all season with the Angels.

“Maybe we learned something out of this,” Angel reliever Steve Frey said. “The next time we’re in trouble, we’ll just run off the field and hope the umpires think there’s three outs.

“The way we’re going, it’s worth a try.”