Jackson Puts On a Show : Baseball: Homer in fifth inning leaves them talking, leads Angels to 7-5 victory over Tigers.

The baseball game was dragging into the late afternoon. The fans were bored. The players were bored. Even the concessionaires lost interest.

Thursday’s game, which had 17 walks and 324 pitches, needed something to spice it up.

It needed . . . Bo.

Bo Jackson, who has a way of enlivening games simply by stepping to the plate, rescued his team and rejuvenated the 15,858 weary fans as the Angels beat the Detroit Tigers, 7-5.

Jackson, helping to give Joe Magrane (1-2) his first victory of the season, drove in a season-high five runs that included an opposite-field home run into the upper deck at Tiger Stadium.

“It gets pretty boring when you go through phases like we did today, with all of those walks,” Jackson said. “Somebody has to do something to wake everybody up.”

Said Angel first baseman Jim Edmonds: “Man, every time he plays, you just stand there and hope you see something spectacular. I was standing in the on-deck circle just watching. It was almost like I wanted to see an instant replay before I went to the plate myself.

“I just wish I could have seen him in his prime, when every day he did something spectacular.”

Jackson arrived at Tiger Stadium expecting to sit on the bench. This was supposed to be the day that left-handed hitter Dwight Smith started in left field, particularly with the Tigers starting right-handed pitcher Mike Moore.

Besides, while virtually every player relishes the idea of hitting in Tiger Stadium, the place has been an albatross to Jackson during his seven-year career. He began the series with a .183 batting average in the ballpark, with only five homers and 11 runs batted in.

“That’s absolutely mind-boggling to me,” Jackson said. “This place is a hitter’s paradise, but I’d never done a thing here.”

That all changed in three days, during which he was four for nine, with two homers and six RBIs.

“It’s taken seven years for me to finally get the hang of this place,” Jackson said. “Now I can’t wait to come back.”

Jackson, who started Thursday because of his .400 lifetime batting average against Moore, began the game quietly with a sacrifice fly in the first inning and a strikeout in the third. The Angels were trailing, 3-2, when he stepped to the plate in the fifth.

There was one out, with Chili Davis on first base, when Jackson fouled off a 3-and-1 pitch. He slapped his bat in disgust. It was a pitch he believed he should have hit 500 feet.

He settled back in and sent the next pitch halfway into the right-field upper deck. It was hit so hard that the ball skipped up the aisle and bounced off the back wall, drawing cheers from the partisan crowd.

“It was unbelievable,” Angel second baseman Rex Hudler said. “That’s something I can’t wait to tell my kids about some day.”

Said Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann: “There’s dynamite in that bat. I’ve got some pretty vivid memories of his strength, and he hasn’t damaged any by seeing him up close.”

Jackson also hit a two-out, two-run single in the sixth inning, and mainly as a result of his efforts, Magrane finally got a victory. It wasn’t pretty, Magrane conceded, but considering that it was his first since returning from arthroscopic elbow surgery, he wasn’t about to be picky.

“Let’s face it,” said Magrane, who yielded eight hits, four walks and five earned runs in 5 1/3 innings, “starting pitchers are judged on wins and losses. All the other stuff is scrapbook material.”

While Magrane believes that playing for Lachemann, a former pitching coach, can be beneficial to everyone on the staff, certainly no one seems to have benefited more than reliever Joe Grahe, who saved his eighth game with a scoreless ninth inning. Lachemann appointed Grahe bullpen closer his first day on the job, and Grahe has responded by saving four consecutive games for the first time since July 24-31, 1992.

“It’s amazing what (Lachemann) can do to a pitcher’s psyche,” said Grahe, who was successful in 21 of 24 save opportunities in 1992 while Lachemann was the Angel pitching coach. “He’s a guy I feel very, very comfortable with, and my confidence is high right now.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time there’s going to be a tomorrow. They say it’s the guys who can come back after (blown saves) that end up hanging around.

“I want to be one of those guys.”

Perhaps most important, Grahe said, he’s finally physically sound. He missed a month of last season because of rotator-cuff tendinitis, and his arm didn’t fully recover until two months ago.

“I wasn’t lobbing the ball in drills this spring because I thought I was big-time,” Grahe said, “but it’s because I had to lob it. I was worried all spring that my arm wouldn’t bounce back.

“Now, I finally feel good again. The confidence is there. The arm is there.

“You know something, I’m having fun again. And I know I’m not alone.”