A Performance Worthy of Cooperstown : Angels: Former USC pitcher gives up four hits in seven innings in major league debut, a 14-1 victory over White Sox.

Brian Cooper walked to the mound, with 31 family members and friends watching at Edison Field Tuesday. Chris Singleton buried his fourth pitch in the right-field seats.

By the end of the evening, those from the Cooper contingent could hardly have cared less.

Cooper left the White Sox hanging in a 14-1 Angel victory in front of 16,867. It was the same type of fresh-face appearance in a stale season that rookie pitcher Ramon Ortiz provided three weeks ago as Cooper gave up four hits in seven innings.

“When you’re in the situation we’re in, you try to end the season on a positive note and not let it carry over into the winter,” third base coach Larry Bowa said. “I’ve grabbed on to something, watching Ortiz. He’s been great. He really battles. Chuck Finley has been a positive. If Troy Glaus hits 25-30 home runs, that would be a positive. When you’re in last place, you need to make the picture rosier than it is.”

Add Cooper to the glass-is-half-full list.

A year ago, he wondered if his baseball career was over, after being smacked around at Midland, then the Angels’ double-A affiliate. A changeup later, he was in the big leagues.

Developing that pitch led to his 10-5 record at double-A Erie this season. He was promoted to triple-A Edmonton, where he went 2-1 in five starts.

Next stop was Anaheim, where young pitchers have flocked in the last month. With many Angel starters inching toward Medicare, team officials want to look at as many fresh arms as possible.

“I never heard a thing about me being called up,” said Cooper, a fourth-round pick out of USC in 1995. “My family kept reading it in the papers. They kept calling me and asking what I knew. I didn’t know anything.”

Except, maybe, how to pitch.

Cooper joined Ortiz as the second Angel pitcher this season to win his major league debut, and the second to do so against Chicago. Whether that is an indictment of the White Sox, Cooper--like Ortiz--won in impressive style.

“I didn’t say anything to him before the game,” said Joe Maddon, the Angels’ interim manager. “There was no way I was going to impart a lot of extraneous information. I left that to [pitching coach] Dick Pole.”

Pole was brief.

“I told him the nervousness would go away after a few pitches and he would realize he was in a ballgame,” Pole said.

But as to how he would do against major league batters?

“I figured the White Sox would let us know,” Maddon said.

Early returns weren’t good. Singleton hammered a 1-and-2 pitch for a 1-0 lead. But, after that, the White Sox got nothing.

Cooper struck out three and twice started 1-6-3 double plays, using a familiar face as the middle man. Angel shortstop Gary DiSarcina played five rehabilitation games at Erie and knew what to expect from Cooper.

“When I saw him in Erie, he seemed to have quality stuff,” DiSarcina said. “He didn’t get rattled and he had a major league curveball.”

It helped that Cooper didn’t have to be perfect. The the Angels sent 10 batters to the plate in the fourth and scored six runs to break a 1-1 tie.

Darin Erstad had four hits in five at-bats and the only time White Sox pitchers got him out was in the third, when he hit a line drive that third baseman Craig Wilson snagged. Erstad scored two runs and drove in two runs.

The Angels scored six more in the eighth, three on Tim Salmon’s home run.