Royals Storm Through Angels

There were tornado warnings in the Kansas City area Friday night, and a severe rain storm caused a one-hour 11-minute delay in the game between the Angels and Royals.

But the real tsunami struck in the bottom of the sixth inning.

That’s when the thunderbolt of a Royal offense and some savory offerings by Angel pitchers turned Seth Etherton’s promising major league debut into a disaster, as Kansas City scored eight runs in the inning en route to a 9-4 victory before 22,394 in Kauffman Stadium.

Etherton, a former Dana Hills High and USC standout, gave up homers to Jermaine Dye and Mark Quinn to open the inning and was pulled with a one-run lead, so he didn’t suffer the loss.

But the Royals fed off the momentum they gained against Etherton, bombing reliever Eric Weaver for six more runs on three-run homers by Brian Johnson and Carlos Febles to turn a 4-1 Angel lead into 9-4 deficit.

Then in the eighth inning, Mike Scioscia got his first ejection as Angel manager.

Garret Anderson appeared to complain about a 2-1 pitch that looked outside but was called a strike, and umpire Tony Randazzo, in his first full major league season, got into Anderson’s face, as the argument escalated.

Scioscia stormed out of the dugout and reached Randazzo just as the umpire was ejecting Anderson, the first time in his six-year major league career he had been thrown out of a game. Scioscia and Randazzo then went jaw-to-jaw in a heated dispute that got Scioscia tossed.

“I thought the umpire was out of line, he was too aggressive,” Scioscia said. “Garret didn’t say anything to warrant that response. I know Tony, I’ve worked with him in the past, and he’s a good guy. I don’t know why he jumped in Garret’s face. He said Garret was showing him up. I disagree.”

The problem appeared to stem from a previous pitch in the at-bat, when Anderson tracked the ball through the strike zone, all the way to the catcher’s mitt. Randazzo said he told Anderson, “Don’t be doing that.”

Then, after the 2-1 pitch, “he did it again, and I told him not to be doing that,” Randazzo said. “Then [Anderson] said, ‘What the hell are you going to do about it?’ That’s when I ejected him.”

Said Anderson: “I didn’t say one word until he took his mask off and got into my face. He got mad at me for tracking the ball through the strike zone. I do that all the time. I can see him being mad if I was complaining all night, but I don’t do that.”

What did Randazzo say to Anderson? “You can’t write it in the paper,” Anderson said.

Said crew chief Ed Montague--an umpire for 25 years in the National League--of Randazzo, who was called up to the National League for the last month of 1999: “Tony is new to [the American League], he doesn’t know these kids. You learn their body language, how they react, and when a kid reacts like that . . . it can be an attempt to show up the umpire. That puts the umpire in the corner.”

Which is exactly where Etherton was when the second pitch of his big league career was smacked for a home run by Johnny Damon, a shot to right-center that sparked a flashback for teammate Jason Dickson in the Angel dugout.

Derek Jeter hit Dickson’s first major league pitch for a home run in Yankee Stadium on Aug. 21, 1996, but that turned out to be the only run Dickson allowed that day in 6 1/3 innings of a 7-1 victory.

Etherton appeared to be crafting a carbon copy of Dickson’s debut, recovering from Damon’s homer and Febles’ ensuing double to retire 15 of the next 19 batters.

Anderson’s two-run homer in the second, Bengie Molina’s RBI single in the fourth and Darin Erstad’s solo homer in the fifth gave the Angels a 4-1 lead, and Etherton cruised into the sixth with confidence and some fatigue, the Midwest humidity sapping him of his strength.

Then Etherton and the Angels got blindsided, as the Royals sent 12 men to the plate and collected eight hits in the sixth, setting a franchise record with four homers in the inning.

“I was real impressed with Seth,” Scioscia said. “He left the ball up in the beginning and end, but in between he pitched a good game. “