Rookie Pitcher Is a Hit as Angels Beat Indians

It was such an incredible game that J.T. Snow hit two home runs, including the game-winner in the top of the 13th inning, had four hits and four runs batted in, made two outstanding defensive plays, and he wasn’t even the hero of the Angels’ 8-6 victory over the Cleveland Indians Sunday.

Nope, the player who was primarily responsible for ending the Angels’ six-game losing streak, who transformed a Jacobs Field crowd of 42,237 into Silence of the Fans after the 4-hour, 33-minute thriller, has worn an Angel uniform for all of three days.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Ryan Hancock.

All Hancock, the 24-year-old right-hander recalled Friday from triple-A Vancouver, did in his second major league game was:

--Throw 2 2/3 innings of scoreless relief against the American League’s best team, striking out one of baseball’s most feared hitters, Albert Belle, in the 12th inning, to earn his first big-league victory.

--Single to right field in the top of the 13th, becoming the first Angel pitcher since Nolan Ryan on Sept. 30, 1972, to get a hit. Hancock then scored the winning run when Snow belted a two-out, two-run homer into the bleachers in right-center field off Indian reliever Julian Tavarez.

--Turn a phenomenal double play in the bottom of the 13th, diving to catch Kenny Lofton’s sacrifice bunt attempt on the fly in front of the plate and throwing to second in time to get Wayne Kirby. That turned a two-on, no-out situation into a two-out, one-on situation.

“It was unbelievable,” Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann said of Hancock’s performance. “That’s one you’d draw up in a script for a movie.”

What could Hancock do for an encore? Drive the team bus to the airport after the game? Pilot the charter to Kansas City for a three-game series?

“He gets his own plane now,” pitcher Mark Langston said.

Added Mike Aldrete: “Do you think the Bulls will call him up for the last two games of the NBA finals?”

Fate was Hancock’s ally Sunday. Had Lachemann not moved designated hitter Rex Hudler to second base in the bottom of the ninth, Hancock wouldn’t have been the second Angel pitcher to bat in the game, following Troy Percival’s strikeout in the 10th.

Had Percival not blown a save for the first time this season, giving up a run on singles by Lofton and Julio Franco and Carlos Baerga’s sacrifice fly in the ninth, the game would not have gone extra innings.

Had Angel reliever Mark Holzemer not strained a muscle underneath his left arm in the 11th, Hancock might never have pitched.

But there Hancock was on the mound, getting Sandy Alomar to ground out with the bases loaded to end the 12th and Baerga on a comebacker in the 13th for the final out.

And there he was at the plate, using Orlando Palmeiro’s bat to hit a soft single to right in the 13th in only his second at-bat since high school. Hancock, a former Brigham Young quarterback, hit once in college, reaching on an error.

“It was a fastball, up,” Hancock said of the pitch he hit Sunday. “Shoot, maybe it was a slider. I wouldn’t know. I don’t even remember seeing it hit my bat. I just saw the right fielder moving, so I figured I’d better run.”

Hancock trotted home from there, as Snow, who had an RBI single in the second, a bases-empty homer in the fourth and a double in the 11th, capped his best day of the season with his sixth homer.

Snow, who won a Gold Glove in 1995 and made a diving stop himself Sunday, then marveled at Hancock’s defensive wizardry in the bottom of the 13th.

“That was one of the best plays I’ve ever seen a pitcher make,” Snow said of Hancock’s double play, the Angels’ fifth of the game. “I told Langston he better hide one of those Gold Gloves, because Ryan is going to take one.”

This was a game the Angels should have won, nearly lost, then really had no business winning. Cleveland took a 3-0 lead in the first, scoring two runs on Belle’s major league-leading 24th homer, and led, 4-1, after three.

Garret Anderson and Snow hit successive homers in the fourth and Anderson hit a two-run double in the fifth, but Cleveland scored in the bottom of the fifth to make it 5-5. Tim Salmon’s homer put the Angels ahead in the seventh, but Percival, in his first save opportunity since May 24, couldn’t hold on.

Going into the 11th, the Angels had Holzemer, Hancock and Shad Williams left in the bullpen. Cleveland had Jose Mesa, baseball’s saves leader, Tavarez and Jim Poole.

But somehow the undermanned Angels, who blew a scoring chance when Damion Easley missed an 11th-inning suicide squeeze attempt, found a way to win.

“Wow, there isn’t a roller coaster in the world that could take us on a wilder ride than that,” Hudler said. “That was a beautiful win, and we needed a win more than anything. Cleveland is such a tough team, they’ve got hitting, pitching, a great stadium with no empty seats . . . but that silence at the end of the game was sweet, man.”