Angel Win Hard to Believe

A home run by Orlando Palmeiro . . . a win by pitcher Chuck Finley in Texas . . . what’s next for the Angels, going a whole month without suffering a major injury?

It was a Ripley’s-Believe-It-or-Not kind of evening, as the Angels used rare feats by Palmeiro and Finley and a typical Texas thunderbolt by Tim Salmon to defeat the Texas Rangers, 8-4, in front of 31,633 at the Ballpark in Arlington in the opener of a four-game series.

After the Angels had been demolished by the Cleveland Indians by the combined score of 18-2 the previous two games and endured an all-night trip that ended with a 7 a.m. arrival at their hotel Friday, Palmeiro opened the game with his first home run in 415 major league at-bats.

Finley gave up four runs on nine hits in six innings, the longest stint for an Angel starter this season, for his first victory over the Rangers at Arlington since June 29, 1995, ending a nine-game losing streak.

Todd Greene had a two-run homer in the second inning, Troy Glaus hit a two-run double in the third and Salmon, who has produced more hits in Texas than Willie Nelson, capped a game-breaking three-run rally with a two-run homer in the seventh, stretching a 5-4 lead to 8-4.

“Looks are way deceiving,” Salmon said when told that the Angels did not appear too sluggish from their travels. “I didn’t feel too bad before the game, but after my second at-bat, I just hit the wall.”

In his fourth, Salmon sent a pitch from reliever Esteban Loaiza over the left-center field wall for his second homer of the season. Also including a first-inning double in a two-for-five performance, Salmon has the highest average for a Ranger opponent (.395) in club history.

Even more impressive is Salmon’s success at the Ballpark in Arlington, where he’s hitting .425 with 10 homers and 30 runs batted in.

“It’s not that I’m real comfortable in the batter’s box here or anything,” Salmon said. “It just seems that whatever I swing at hits a hole or I get lucky and it falls in.”

Finley, on the other hand, has had terrible luck in this Texas torture chamber. In his previous 12 games at Arlington, Finley was 3-9 with a 6.85 earned-run average.

The theory behind Finley’s struggles, at least early in his career, was that he always felt pressured to pitch well in front of the dozens of family members who drove to Arlington from his hometown of Monroe, La. But the left-hander says that hasn’t been the case in recent years.

“There have been games I thought I pitched pretty well here that I ended up losing,” he said. “It was just nice to get some runs.”

Finley wasn’t wondering if he would ever win again in Texas, “but my parents were,” he said. “My dad said if I didn’t do something good tonight he was going to charge me for gas for the ride over.”

Ranger fans had to be wondering what was happening when the other Palmeiro, not their slugging designated hitter Rafael, sent Texas starter John Burkett’s full-count, first-inning pitch into the right-field bleachers.

The 5-foot-11, 175-pound Palmeiro raced around the bases as if he was late for a flight, inciting a few barbs from the Angel dugout.

“I told him to slow down and enjoy it,” pitcher Tim Belcher said. “He said, ‘I hit a home run every El Nino.’ ”

Palmeiro can recall every homer he has hit as a professional because there have been only three others, in Yakima, Wash., in 1991, in Colorado Springs in 1994 and in Omaha in 1998.

“It took three innings to sink in, because I don’t even hit them in batting practice,” he said. Told he has more homers than Mo Vaughn and Darin Erstad combined, Palmeiro said: “I’m sure that will change. But it’s nice to see a number under that category.”