A Haunting Experience Is Facing Angels Again

When both starting pitchers have left the game by the second inning, when the first three innings take an hour and a half, when the air is thick with humidity and moths and the tension that is burbling in the stomachs of players from two baseball teams which are dead even in the battle for a division title, there is no better feeling, there is no worse feeling.

It was the best feeling for Texas Ranger players Tim Crabtree and Tom Goodwin, who do not strike you as the most likely of heroes, and it was the most terrible feeling for the Angels’ Rich DeLucia, whose off-kilter pitch that smashed Royce Clayton in the shoulder in the eighth inning was followed by a fat offering to Goodwin that became a double and the game-winning RBI.

And so the Angels come home a game behind the Rangers with 10 games left in the season, home to where they’re sure to hear how the grand choke has begun, how it’s just the same old Angels blowing it again. Which is absolutely unfair since these Angels have no business being within 10 games, much less one, of the Rangers. And yet these Angels know what everybody back home is thinking, that the end has begun. And knowing that everyone is thinking that will make it even more difficult for the Angels to overcome Thursday night’s 7-6 loss.

It had been a bright and shining start for Anaheim at the sold-out Ballpark at Arlington. (Take note of that, Angels fans.) Darin Erstad was back in the lineup. Absolutely he could run, Manager Terry Collins said before the game about his rosy-cheeked star first baseman who had been sidelined nearly two weeks with a bad left hamstring .

Pow. First pitch of the game Erstad connects. Out to the wall the ball goes and it’s a good thing too, because Erstad barely made it to first base. A double turned into a single because, it turns out, Erstad couldn’t run a lick. One batter later, after Erstad limped to second when Randy Velarde walked, reality was faced and Erstad went back to the bench. Still the Angels strutted to a 4-0 lead.

By the end of the first, however, the Rangers had tied the game. This was not going to be a pitching battle and there was the feeling that it would end badly for the Angels. Erstad, the good luck charm, had been used and maybe abused and the Rangers matched the Angels’ explosion.

“Can’t underestimate how big that bottom of the first was for us,” Crabtree said. It was the fist-pumping, crowd-rousing Crabtree who pitched a career-high four innings of middle relief, allowing no hits and no runs. “It was so big to score those four runs of our own. It gave us all a boost. I’ve had some high moments, but this was awesome. It was a great night all the way around, down four runs and we battled back. The crowd was in the game, it was outstanding.”

The Angels also had a 6-4 lead but that went away with the home runs of Todd Zeile and Juan Gonzalez in the third and fourth innings.

Collins said before the game that there was a danger in placing too much importance on this game, that there were 10 to go, that Texas comes to town Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for three more, that playing the Rangers counts no more or less than playing Seattle and Oakland, as both teams must.

But it is also dangerous to underestimate the importance of this two-game sweep of the Angels for the Rangers. They have lived with hearing themselves called underachievers for all of the time they have trailed the Angels and it has gnawed at them. “We are sick of hearing that,” Crabtree said .

It seemed that hearing it so much this week made the Rangers both angry and eager.

Which leads to the question of whether or not the Angels are tired of hearing about blown pennant chances of seasons past? Are they both angry and eager now?

“We have 10 games left,” pitcher Shigetoshi Hasegawa said, “and if everybody is aggressive, maybe we can win.”

It is the word “maybe” that resonates here. That is not an angry, eager word.

Steve Sparks, the Angels’ starting pitcher Thursday night, said that “it’s too late in the year to feel sorry for ourselves. We have to play a game better than Texas the rest of the way. There’s a week and a half left and we’re as close as we can get without being tied.”

A nice sentiment except that the Angels have spent the best part of the last month and a half being the chasee and not the chaser. Will the Angels find some unlikely heroes in the next 10 days? Or even some likely heroes? Or will they still be hearing of blown chances?

Angry and eager works. Ask the Rangers.