Angels Warm to the Task : Baseball: Snow, Anderson homer in 7-3 win at humid Detroit as team takes sole possession of division lead.

DETROIT — Angel first baseman J.T. Snow took a few deep breaths during his eighth-inning at-bat against the Tigers Friday night, to which home-plate umpire Tim McClelland responded: “Don’t take too many more, or you’re gonna suck all of the air out of the stadium.”

Welcome to Inferno Night in Detroit: Game-time temperature of 104 degrees. Humidity index that made it feel like 119 degrees. It was, as Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina said, “the hardest game I’ve ever had to get my body through.”

But the Angels, depleted of oxygen and the heart of their batting order, beat the heat and Detroit, 7-3, before a paid crowd of 19,204 in the sauna that was Tiger Stadium.

The air was thick and heavy, but that didn’t prevent Snow’s sixth-inning, two-run home run from reaching the upper deck in right field to snap a 3-3 tie. Nor did it prevent Garret Anderson from following Snow’s homer with a bases-empty blast that landed on the right-field roof.

“I was getting on Garret, wondering why he was showing me up like that,” said Snow, whose homer snapped a 0-for-14 skid and helped the Angels regain sole possession of first place in the American League West. “I only hit one into the upper deck. He practically put one out of the stadium.”

These are prodigious feats you expect from players such as Tim Salmon and Chili Davis, usually the Nos. 3 and 4 hitters in the lineup. But with Davis on the disabled list and Salmon scratched at the last minute because of a stomach virus, the Angels had to face the resurgent Tigers without their two best power threats.

Not to worry. This team has had more heroes than a Philadelphia sandwich shop this season, so without the two best items on their menu, the Angels simply dialed up a few more specials Friday night:

--In addition to his monstrous homer in the sixth, Anderson hit a two-run single in the second and scored on DiSarcina’s sacrifice fly as the Angels took a 3-0 lead. The rookie left fielder also made a nice, leaping catch of Franklin Stubbs’ drive to the wall in the ninth.

--Rex Hudler, making his first appearance in right field since Oct. 4, 1992, replaced Salmon and, after a long run, made a diving catch of Bobby Higginson’s foul ball in the Angel bullpen in the fourth inning.

--Reliever John Habyan, acquired in a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals last Saturday, had a successful Angel debut, pitching 2 1/3 scoreless innings.

--Russ Springer, a reliever who was told Thursday that he would replace the injured Shawn Boskie in the rotation, gave the Angels 4 2/3 gutty innings, giving up three runs and leaving with a 3-3 tie.

--Troy Percival, usually the Angels’ set-up man for closer Lee Smith, pitched 1 1/3 scoreless innings to notch his first major-league save for reliever Bob Patterson, who got the victory.

“It’s been that way all season, someone different stepping up to get the job done,” Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann said. “Tim was sick with the flu, so Rex goes out to right field and dives all over the place. J.T. and Garret come up with big nights. When things are going well, someone picks you up, and that makes it hard for opponents to zero in on any one person.”

There was one potential downside to the victory, though. Lachemann, who has said several times this season that he doesn’t want to use Percival on consecutive days or before the eighth inning, came back with the right-hander one day after he threw two innings--and 27 pitches--in Thursday night’s victory over the Tigers.

“My arm feels like I don’t want to throw for a while,” said Percival, who threw 22 pitches. “I think it’s the heat more than anything. I was absolutely drained by the time I got out of there.”

Percival replaced Habyan with two outs in the eighth and got John Flaherty to fly out on his first pitch. Smith stopped warming up in the bullpen, but when DiSarcina scored on a two-out balk to give the Angels a comfortable four-run lead, Lachemann did not instruct another reliever to warm up.

The question then became: Whose arm do you save? Percival’s or Smith’s? Lachemann chose Smith’s.

“Percival was already loose and only made one pitch in the eighth,” Lachemann said. “And we had Smith to back him up in the ninth if we needed him.”