BASEBALL / DAILY REPORT : ANGELS : Langston Dances Around Arm Questions

It was a simple, straightforward question to pitcher Mark Langston: Is your arm healthy? The answer was a verbal figure eight.

“I’ve got two more starts, I’ll do whatever it takes,” said Langston, who gave up seven runs on nine hits in Friday night’s 8-3 loss to the Rangers. “I’ve just got to execute, make my pitches.”

But is there any pain, any lingering soreness from the elbow and shoulder tendinitis that bothered you in July?

“I feel I can still do my job, like I can contribute,” Langston said. “I feel I have some fight left.”

It seemed as if Langston was hiding something, but Manager Marcel Lachemann didn’t. He said Langston has tendinitis in the biceps area and would be examined by Dr. Lewis Yocum Saturday night.

Langston seems determined to live down the “gutless” label that former Manager Dick Williams tagged on him a few years ago. He has been ineffective in his last two starts, giving up a combined 14 runs and 16 hits in losses to Kansas City and Texas, but he refuses to use a sore arm as an excuse.

He has two more scheduled starts this season, Wednesday at Seattle and Oct. 1 against Oakland on the last day of the season. He’ll only make the second one if the Angels are still in the American League West division or wild-card race. He plans to make both.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes, whatever I can,” Langston said. “You can roll over and die or keep fighting. I’m not giving up.”

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Lachemann said before Saturday night’s game that Andy Allanson, who was in the starting lineup for the second night in a row, might catch the Angels’ remaining seven games because he “does a good job handling pitchers and catching games, and right now that’s more important than hitting.”

Allanson’s first-inning performance may have landed him back on the bench, though. He couldn’t stop a ball in the dirt that was ruled a wild pitch, enabling Otis Nixon to advance to second, and he misplayed a pitch into a passed ball that allowed Mark McLemore to advance to third and Will Clark to second.

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Right fielder Tim Salmon had a single, two walks and scored a run Saturday night. This season in The Ballpark at Arlington, he is batting .667 (12 for 18) with a triple, three home runs, six runs batted in and nine runs in. . . . Nixon, the Rangers’ center fielder who went 4 for 4 Saturday night, has now reached base to lead off the Texas’ first inning in 12 of the last 13 games. In contrast, Angel leadoff batter Tony Phillips is now four for 40 (.100) with 18 strikeouts in first-inning at-bats since Aug. 1.