Snow Takes a Swing at All of His Doubters : Baseball: Angel infielder believes he needs to keep hitting to get people to focus on this season, not last season.

He is loath to admit it, but J.T. Snow carries a heavy burden of expectation with him each time he steps to the plate.

Can he duplicate his torrid hitting of April, 1993? If so, when? If not, why?

No matter how much he tries to bury the past, he can’t escape from it. Perhaps only by showing others there is a present and future to consider can the first baseman truly put it behind him.

With each passing hit, he attempts to make last year, as he said Saturday, “last year.”

He continued to hammer away on that theme, however simplistic it may be, after hitting a three-run homer in the Angels’ 12-7 victory over Texas at Anaheim Stadium.

Truth is, a single to right in the third inning and a homer in the eighth, helped the Angels beat Texas on a warm Saturday night. Nothing more, nothing less.

The three-run homer was the final blow in a seven-run eighth inning that rallied the Angels past the Rangers.

And winning, he said, was what counted most of all.

“I think we showed a lot of perseverance in that inning,” he said after raising his average to .222. “We could have given up. They just kept coming back at us.”

The Angels trailed, 7-5, going into the eighth, but thanks to a funny bounce and a lot of hustle, they built a 9-7 lead when Snow stepped into the batter’s box to face reliever Cris Carpenter.

Snow had singled in the third, taking what starter Kevin Brown had given him, serving it neatly into left field.

Against Carpenter, Snow quickly fell behind 0-and-2. There were two outs with Chili Davis standing at third and Rex Hudler at second.

It figured to be a pivotal at-bat. If Carpenter retired Snow, the Angels would have a two-run lead with Ivan Rodriguez, batting .286 with eight homers, Jose Canseco (.297, 21 homers) and Will Clark (.356, 10 homers) coming up in the ninth.

Carpenter then threw a pitch down and in and Snow swung easily, lofting a high drive that arched deep into the Texas bullpen in right field.

It was Snow’s second homer of the season and impressed Manager Marcel Lachemann, who liked the way Snow wouldn’t give in to Carpenter.

“That was a good at-bat for him,” Lachemann said. “He fouled off some pretty good pitches and it didn’t look like he overswung on that ball.”

But the ball still flew an estimated 404 feet.

“They (home runs) all feel good, but that one was special,” Snow said. “I was down in the count. . . .

“We were all going crazy on the bench (during the big inning). It finally seemed like we were getting some breaks. It was like a little light went on and we got some smiles on our faces.”

The victory moved the Angels to within 2 1/2 games of first-place Texas, which Snow said made it even more important.

Having ended a zero-for-21 slide with his first homer of the season Tuesday, he has quietly put together an impressive home stand. After Saturday’s game, he has six hits in his past 19 at-bats, a .316 average.

“We just have to keep believing in ourselves,” said Snow, recalled June 4 from triple-A Vancouver. “In a division that’s this tight, you have to have a sense of where you’re going.”

In other words, there’s no sense looking back.