Angels, Easley Clip Yankees, 4-2 : Baseball: Second baseman leads California to fifth consecutive victory over New York this season.

Growing up in the Mt. Vernon section of the Bronx, Damion Easley was a big Yankee fan. Team pennants and posters adorned the walls of his 229th Street apartment bedroom; shelves were filled with Yankee caps, batting gloves and trading cards.

“You name it, I had it,” the Angel second baseman said.

So, where’s all that pinstripe paraphernalia now?

“I had to trash it,” he said.

Just as he did the Yankees Saturday. Easley scored the Angels’ first run with an evasive head-first slide in the first inning, then hit a two-run home run in the fifth as the Angels scored a 4-2 victory before an announced crowd of 17,768 at Yankee Stadium.

Angel starter Shawn Boskie lasted 5 2/3 innings to improve to 4-0, and Lee Smith pitched a scoreless ninth for his 14th save. Smith is now one shy of the major league record of 15 saves in consecutive appearances set by the Cleveland Indians’ Doug Jones in 1988.

While the Angels improved to 22-13, the Yankees dropped to 13-19. New York has lost five straight and 10 of 11.

The Yankees also wasted another strong pitching performance as Jack McDowell went the distance, giving up only five hits, including two by Easley, who had three hits in his last 21 at-bats before Saturday.

But Easley, who drove in two runs in the Angels’ 3-2 victory over the Yankees Friday night, seemed motivated by his surroundings and the 20 family members and friends at the game.

“It’s always special playing in this stadium,” he said. “I remember coming to games and watching Willie Randolph, Ron Guidry, Reggie Jackson. I still get excited when I see Randolph [who is now the Yankees’ third base coach]. I tried to emulate him growing up.”

Easley, hitless in nine previous at-bats against McDowell, did all the little things--and some of the big things--that Randolph was known for during his tenure as Yankee second baseman in 1976-88.

Easley’s aggressiveness created a run in the first as he got a good jump off third base on Chili Davis’ chopper to first, dived to the outside to avoid catcher Jim Leyritz’s tag and touched the plate with his left hand.

Easley had a bunt single in the third and a sacrifice bunt in the seventh and played solid defense at second base. Also, like Randolph, he showed some power, drilling a 1-and-2 pitch into the left-field bleachers to give the Angels a 3-2 lead in the fifth.

“When McDowell gets two strikes on you, you don’t think, you react and hope you get a decent pitch to hit,” Easley said. “It was a hanging splitter that just kind of sat there.”

The Angels didn’t sit on the lead. J.T. Snow opened the sixth with a single, advanced on right fielder Paul O’Neill’s error and went to third on Jim Edmonds’ fly ball.

Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter couldn’t make a backhand stab of Andy Allanson’s two-out grounder, and Allanson was credited with an RBI single, making it 4-2.

The Yankees, who have lost all five meetings with the Angels this season, tagged Boskie for two runs in the fourth on Bernie Williams’ double, Randy Velarde’s RBI single and Jeter’s RBI double. Boskie had thrown 110 pitches when he was pulled in favor of Mitch Williams with two out and a runner on first in the sixth.

Williams struck out Danny Tartabull to end the inning but walked Wade Boggs and gave up a single to O’Neill to open the seventh.

In came Troy Percival. Out went the Yankees.

Percival blew three fastballs by Leyritz; Don Mattingly flied out, and Percival fooled Dion James with a slow curve on the outside corner for a called third strike. Percival struck out two more in the eighth to set up Smith for the ninth.

Percival, who grew up in Southern California, had never pitched in Yankee Stadium but was not intimidated by the occasion.

“I never followed the Yankees to the point where it would give me chills to pitch here,” Percival said. “I had nothing to be nervous about.”