Angels Take the Long Way Around, 10-8 : Baseball: Lee Smith earns a record 15th consecutive save in a victory over Boston that takes 4 hours 9 minutes.

The game went so long Angel reliever Lee Smith could have taken more than his usual early-inning siesta--he could have gone into hibernation.

“Did I take a nap? Heck, I took two of them,” Smith said after the Angels’ 10-8 victory over the Boston Red Sox, which took 4 hours 9 minutes and featured 11 pitching changes, 29 hits--but no home runs--three errors, a two-round, bench-clearing brawl and two ejections on a dreary, drizzly night in Fenway Park.

Fortunately, Smith set the alarm and was up in time to retire all three batters in the ninth for his 15th consecutive save, which tied the major league record reliever Doug Jones set for Cleveland in 1988.

That brought an end to the longest nine-inning game in Angel history, topping the 4-hour record they set May 21 at Chicago, and the longest nine-inning game in the major leagues this year. It just happened to come on a day baseball owners adopted several radical recommendations to shorten games.

“I had enough time to see two movies, get brunch, get back, and it still wouldn’t have been over,” said pitcher Chuck Finley, who watched from the bench. “It would have been a long night had we lost, but winning helps you tolerate a lot of things.”

The Angels, who pulled out a split of the four-game series in Boston, built a 4-0 lead in the first inning and were ahead, 6-1, in the fourth when the Red Sox scored six runs--three on Mo Vaughn’s double--off starter Shawn Boskie to take a 7-6 lead.

Boskie was pulled in the fourth, and by the time the game was over, he practically had one day’s rest. The Angels pounded out a season-high 18 hits, 16 of them singles (they also left a season-high 16 runners on base), and the six Angel relievers who followed Boskie gave up only one run.

“My kid keeps telling me it’s my fault the games are so long because I keep changing pitchers,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said. “At least I tried to run out there when I did it.”

Lachemann felt as if he’d finished a Boston Marathon.

“I’m worn out,” he said. “But it wouldn’t be a heck of a lot of fun to play 4:09 and lose.”

The Angels tied the score, 7-7, in the fifth on Rex Hudler’s single and Gary DiSarcina’s RBI double, and the Red Sox went ahead, 8-7, in the sixth when Lee Tinsley doubled, advanced on a fly ball and scored on an error.

After Angel left fielder Tony Phillips and Boston catcher Mike Macfarlane were ejected for igniting a brawl in the seventh, the Angels scored twice in the eighth, one run on an error and the other on DiSarcina’s fielder’s choice, to take a 9-8 lead.

Rookie Troy Percival pitched a scoreless eighth for his sixth “hold,” and the Angels added an insurance run in the ninth on Tim Salmon’s single, a walk and J.T. Snow’s single. Smith, the major leagues’ career save leader with 449, then shut down the Red Sox in the ninth.

Phillips wasn’t around for the ending, though. After questioning a strike call, he and Macfarlane went jaw to jaw, got into a shoving match, and both benches emptied for a brief scrum in which no punches were thrown.

Phillips, who is 5 feet 10 and 175 pounds, then got into a shoving match with Boston hitting instructor Jim Rice, the former Red Sox slugger who is 6-2, 210. Again, benches emptied with no punches thrown.

“I don’t care if you’re King Kong, I’m not going to back down when I’m in the heat of the battle,” Phillips said. “Mike and I are good friends, but when he told me to get back in the box, I felt he was disrespecting me. I have a lot of respect for him and Jim Rice, but I had to do what I had to do.”

It has been quite a week for Phillips, who fumed after having his bat confiscated by the Yankees on Sunday and was ejected for the second time this season Thursday.

“But I welcome this kind of stuff,” he said. “I’m the type of guy who can’t play nice. Anything that ticks me off is a plus.”