Shea Hey, Angels Lose Way in N.Y.

The Angels were about to make history, but you’d hardly have known it from the scene in their Shea Stadium clubhouse about an hour before Wednesday’s game against the New York Yankees.

Chuck Finley was sprawled on the floor, his back against a wall, his cap over his face. Mike James was crumpled in a locker for a nap, a rolled-up jacket serving as a pillow.

Omar Olivares, Rich DeLucia and Shigetoshi Hasegawa were on their backs, eyes closed, their heads resting in their lockers, their feet up on chairs. Those who sat up wore glazed looks.

“I’d kill for a cup of coffee right now,” Dave Hollins said.

Where’s a Starbucks when you really need one?

That was early, but the Angels looked like zombies for much of the day, sleepwalking their way through the first six innings of a 6-3 loss to the Yankees before a crowd of 40,743.

By the time the alarm sounded and the offense stirred with home runs by Darin Erstad, Phil Nevin and Gary DiSarcina off Yankee starter David Wells in the last three innings, it was too late.

The Yankees rocked Ken Hill for five runs on 10 hits in four innings, ending the right-hander’s 19-inning scoreless streak dating back to last season, and it was clear that a bizarre three-day stay in New York would end in disappointment for the Angels.

“We did not get ourselves ready to play today, no doubt about it,” Manager Terry Collins said. “This was strange, but we can’t use that as an excuse. We all went through the same thing. We came here on a high note [Sunday’s 12-1 victory over Cleveland], sat around for two days and got flat.”

The collapse of a 500-pound steel expansion joint in Yankee Stadium prompted postponement of games Monday and Tuesday nights, but the teams were able to reschedule Wednesday’s game for Shea, the home of the Mets in Flushing Meadow.

With the Mets and Chicago Cubs scheduled to play Wednesday night in Shea, it marked the first time this century there have been two regular-season games involving four teams in one stadium on the same day. But the historic day-night, American League-National League doubleheader necessitated a noon (EDT) start for the Angels and Yankees.

The Angels took a bus from their midtown Manhattan hotel to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to dress for the game because that was their preference. So they had to get up at around 7 a.m., Eastern time. It was the equivalent of getting up at 4 a.m.

There were other reasons to feel disoriented: They used a clubhouse that once belonged to the New York Jets. They were the visiting team but sat in the home dugout. Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard was introducing players at Shea. And many players had never experienced the roar of jets taking off at nearby LaGuardia Airport.

Afterward, they had to take the bus back to Yankee Stadium to shower, then turn around and head back again to LaGuardia.

Compounding matters was a light morning rain, which prompted groundskeepers to keep the field covered until just before game time and prevented the Angels from taking infield practice.

“We took batting practice in the cages,” Collins said. “But after sitting around for two days, you’ve really got to get out there and do something.”

The Yankees played a six-inning exhibition against their double-A team Tuesday, and were certainly the sharper team Wednesday. Paul O’Neill singled, doubled and tripled in his first three at-bats, Tino Martinez had two run-scoring doubles and Darryl Strawberry, who helped the Mets win the 1986 World Series, had three hits, including a home run.

That produced another bit of strangeness. When a Met hits a home run, a “Big Apple” pops up to salute the achievement. After Strawberry’s homer, it began to rise from the huge top hat beyond the center-field fence. Then it stopped, the operator apparently realizing it has a Met logo and that Strawberry is now a Yankee.

Wells gave up only one hit through six innings, retiring every Angel with the exception of Jim Edmonds, who hit a second-inning single, and the left-hander pitched into the ninth before giving way to reliever Jeff Nelson, who got Tim Salmon and Cecil Fielder to pop out with a runner on third to end the game.

“They faced live pitching [Tuesday] and they were pretty much prepared to go,” Hill said of the Yankees, winners of six consecutive games.

“It was a difficult situation for us, but we had no control over what happened. I put us in a hole early, and it’s tough to come from behind against a guy like David Wells when he’s pitching well.”