Butcher Slices Off a Rally by Indians : Angels: Pitcher gets first save. Back-to-back homers by Curtis and Salmon make the difference, 2-1.

Mike Butcher sat in the Angel clubhouse Friday night with a slice of pizza in his right hand, a beer in his left hand, and a grass-stained baseball lying prominently behind him.

“It’s like that commercial,” Butcher said, “it doesn’t get any better than this. I’ll never forget this night as long as I live.”

Butcher, who wondered a few months ago whether he would ever pitch again, was the man of the hour in the Angels’ 2-1 victory over the Cleveland Indians.

Before 23,634 at Cleveland Stadium, Butcher produced his first major league save, shutting down the Indians for the final 1 1/3 innings and pumping his fist in ecstasy after each out.

“I thought for a moment that (Al) Hrabosky was out there,” said Angel starter Chuck Finley (11-6), whose victory was preserved by Butcher. “Was he pumped up or what?”

Finley pitched seven innings, and hadn’t even left the bench when Kenny Lofton opened the eighth with a double off left-handed reliever Steve Frey. Wayne Kirby sacrificed Lofton to third, but he had to hold when Carlos Baerga grounded to third baseman Rene Gonzales.

That brought up Albert Belle, and considering that he has 24 homers with 76 runs batted in and is in the midst of a career-high 14-game hitting streak, Manager Buck Rodgers wasn’t about to let Frey face him. Enter Butcher, who promptly walked Belle on four pitches.

“So much for strategy, right?” Rodgers said.

While Rodgers paced the dugout, Butcher ended the rally by striking out Paul Sorrento on an inside fastball, pumping his fist a la Dennis Eckersley. Rodgers then left Butcher in the game to open the ninth and didn’t bother having anyone else warm up.

“It was penthouse or outhouse,” Rodgers said.

Said Butcher: “I was too scared to look to see if anyone was warming up.”

No problem. Thomas Howard went down swinging. Alvaro Espinoza went down swinging. And the game ended with Jeff Treadway lining out to Butcher.

Butcher clutched the ball, looking at it as if it were his most precious possession, and ran to the dugout to celebrate.

“This ball’s going to my (minor league) pitching coach Gary Ruby,” Butcher said, “but actually it belongs to the whole organization for sticking with me when they could have easily turned their back on me.”

Butcher, 28, who long ago was given up on by the Kansas City Royals, spent six years in the minor leagues without advancing past double-A ball. Friends kept telling him to give up the dream and go back to school. His family worried that he was wasting his life.

Butcher refused to relent. He finally made his major league debut July 6, 1992, making all of East Moline, Ill., proud. But Butcher’s ecstasy was short-lived. In two months, his arm became so sore that he couldn’t even pick up a baseball. In November, he underwent shoulder surgery.

“I thought that might be it,” Butcher said. “I went back home and thought about going back to school. I was going to enroll at the University of Oklahoma and finish my degree.”

This time, his friends and family refused to let him. Butcher spent the first two months of the season on the disabled list, pitched 14 games on a rehabilitative stint at triple-A Vancouver, and exactly eight months to the day of his surgery, was celebrating his first save.

“This is such a rush, I can’t even explain what I’m feeling,” Butcher said. “This makes everything I’ve gone through worthwhile. Believe me, it’s a night I’ll never forget.”

Outfielders Chad Curtis and Tim Salmon provided the Angels’ lone offense in the sixth inning off Cleveland starter Mark Clark. Curtis opened the sixth by hitting the first pitch into the left-field seats to make the score 1-1. Two pitches later, Salmon hit a breaking ball over the left-field fence.

It was the first time since April 17 in Baltimore that the Angels have hit back-to-back homers.

“We were shut out in this game, for all but 30 seconds,” Curtis said.