Ground Ball Only Has Eyes for Yankees

The Angels and New York Yankees played for 4 hours 47 minutes on Sunday and might have played a few hours more if not for a split-second play in the 12th inning.

That was all the time it took speedy Alfonso Soriano of the Yankees to beat Angel second baseman Adam Kennedy’s flip-throw to first on a ground ball hit off the end of Soriano’s bat.

Soriano’s two-out infield single with the bases loaded broke a tie and sent the Yankees to a 7-5 victory before a sellout crowd of 43,455 at Edison Field.

“If it’s hit harder, he’s out,” Angel first baseman Scott Spiezio said. “If it’s hit softer, he’s out. If it’s hit a foot closer to me, I probably get it and flip it to the pitcher.

“It was one of those perfect-placement balls.”

For the Angels, it was a less-than-perfect ending to a 20-game stretch against the best teams in the American League.

The Angels played AL Central leader Minnesota, AL West leader Seattle, the AL East-leading Yankees and wild-card contenders Oakland and Boston and finished with a 12-8 record.

“This lets the league know we’re for real,” said closer Troy Percival, who pitched one scoreless inning Sunday. “To have us come out and play like we have, it shows that teams are going to have to know that when we come into town, we’re coming to play.”

Still, Sunday’s loss left the Angels with a split in the four-game series against the Yankees and a 3-4 record for the home stand. The Angels took off for Detroit on Sunday night three games behind the Mariners in the division race and tied with the Red Sox in the wild-card race.

“We’re still in it,” Angel shortstop David Eckstein said. “We just have to keep playing with the kind of intensity we had these past 20 games.”

The Yankees and Angels both came out swinging Sunday and were tied, 5-5, after two innings.

Jason Giambi drove in a run with a double, Raul Mondesi hit his 20th home run and Derek Jeter, Enrique Wilson and Bernie Williams had run-scoring singles for the Yankees against Angel starter Ramon Ortiz, who gave up nine hits in 4 1/3 innings.

Yankee left-hander David Wells fared no better. He surrendered a three-run homer to Troy Glaus, a sacrifice fly by Tim Salmon and a run-scoring single to Shawn Wooten. Wells, who had won his last five decisions and had pitched at least five innings in all but one of his previous 21 starts, lasted only two innings, his shortest outing of the season.

Both teams wasted scoring opportunities over the next nine innings and each used six pitchers in the game. The Yankees stranded 15 runners, the Angels 11.

Angel reliever Scot Shields pitched out of a jam in the 11th, but contributed to his own undoing in the 12th by issuing three walks.

“I tried a few different things while I was out there but nothing worked for me today,” said Shields, who was 3-0 with a 1.32 earned-run average in his previous nine appearances.

Shields retired Nick Johnson on a ground ball to start the 12th before walking Rondell White and Jorge Posada. He appeared to regain his command when he struck out Jeter for the second out.

“I thought that was a pretty good sequence of pitches,” Shields said. “I thought I had found my release point. Somehow I lost it again.”

With MVP candidate Soriano on deck, Shields walked Wilson to load the bases.

It looked as though Shields might escape when he got Soriano to hit a low, outside pitch to the right side of the infield. Kennedy dashed to his left, scooped up the ball and flipped it from his glove to Spiezio, but umpire John Hirschbeck ruled Soriano safe as White crossed the plate with the go-ahead run.

Spiezio fell to the ground in seeming disbelief over the call, and that allowed Posada to score.

“I made a good pitch, but those guys shouldn’t have been on base,” Shields said. “I’m not going away thinking we should have been out of that inning because we should have been out of it way before if I had made my pitches.”

Ramiro Mendoza, filling in for the injured Mariano Rivera as the Yankees’ closer, came in for the home half of the inning. He struck out Glaus, got pinch-hitter Brad Fullmer to hit a fly ball to center field and struck out Kennedy to earn his fourth save.

The Angels play a makeup game against the Tigers tonight and will play 25 of their next 32 games against teams with losing records, before finishing the season with 20 games against AL West opponents.

“In past years, we’ve played well against good teams and then gone into cities where teams aren’t playing so good and there’s a letdown,” Percival said. “But I haven’t seen it this year--and I don’t think I will.”

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AL Wild Card

*--* W L GB Angels 65 45 -- Boston 65 45 -- Oakland 64 48 2

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