Bedraggled Twins Rough Up Angels : Baseball: Worst team in majors wins, 9-8, in 10 innings; California lead falls to five games.

Sure, the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies led St. Louis by 6 1/2 games with 12 to play and lost the pennant. But at least they didn’t suffer the ignominy the Angels did in blowing a five-run lead to the 1995 Minnesota Twins during the stretch drive.

The Twins, using Kirby Puckett at second, third and shortstop and pitcher Dave Stevens at designated hitter, scored a run without benefit of a hit in the 10th inning and embarrassed the Angels, 9-8, Sunday in front of a paid 19,319 at Anaheim Stadium.

If the Angels, whose lead in the American League West was reduced to five for the first time since July 22, continue their free fall and end up one game short of the division title, this is the one they will remember.

“Yeah, that was a tough one to lose,” Manager Marcel Lachemann said. “We had a lead, let it get away, came back again, and then lost on a play when the guy definitely ran out of the baseline.

“But there were a lot of things we did to ourselves to let it get to that point.”

The Twins scored three in the fifth and twice in the sixth to tie the game, 7-7, but the Angels came back with a run in the bottom of the sixth to regain the lead. Then pinch-hitter Dan Masteller slammed a leadoff homer off Lee Smith in the ninth, sending the game into extra innings.

Mark Holzemer hit Rich Becker with a pitch leading off the ninth and Becker took second on Matt Walbeck’s groundout. One out later, Matt Lawton hit a grounder to Spike Owen. Owen trapped the ball against his chest, then tried to tag Becker, who managed to avoid the tag. Owen then threw wildly to first and Becker scored the winning run.

“The guy ran all the way onto the grass and had to circle back to the bag,” Owen said. “He should’ve been called out. I’m not making any excuses for the throw. If I make a good throw, we’re out of the inning anyway, but the guy was clearly out of the basepaths.”

Becker--and third base umpire Rick Reed--disagreed.

“I never stepped on the grass,” Becker said. “All I had to do was arch my back as I went past.”

Much of the postgame discussion may have centered on one play, but this was four hours 25 minutes of missed opportunities, bizarre roster moves and general mayhem.

“If you’re in a situation where you like to watch a baseball game with a lot of nonsense going on, this game was for you,” Minnesota Manager Tom Kelly said.

The Angels used a club-record-tying nine pitchers. Forty-two players got their names in the box score, including 24 Angels, one short of the franchise record.

The Twins, in fact, ran out of players and had to use Puckett at second base, then shortstop, then third, then second again. He has played the infield before, the last time in 1992, but when Garret Anderson grounded out to him at second base in the 10th, it was the first ball he had handled as an infielder.

“It’s a good thing he didn’t smoke that ball; I’d have just gotten out of the way,” said Puckett, who picked it up and fired it to first. “I got rid of it so fast because I wanted to take the pressure off me and put it on somebody else as soon as possible.”

Lost in the shuffle was a six-run Angel fourth inning that included four unearned runs after center fielder Matt Lawton opened the floodgates when he flubbed Dick Schofield’s shallow pop-up. Jim Edmonds continued to shake off his prolonged slump with his first RBI and first homer--a three-run shot to right in the fourth--since Aug. 25.

Not forgotten, however, was the lost opportunity. The Twins, 40 games out in the AL Central, appeared to be a team ripe for a sweep, but the Angels let this one slip away while both Seattle and Texas were winning.

“This loss hurts, Edmonds said, “and it’s going to be tough to shake off because we led, 7-2. We flat out just played bad baseball and it’s coming down to crunch time.”