Percival Shatters Mystique With His Power Drill

You knew it would come down to this.

During four decades of plague, pestilence and late-inning destruction, hasn’t it always come down to this?

As the clock struck midnight in the Bronx on Wednesday, Troy Percival drilled a fastball into the back of the New York Yankees’ No. 12.

Directly on top of the 1, smack in the middle of the jinx.

Alfonso Soriano walked 90 feet to load the bases.

The crowd chanted an obscenity.

The television showed replays of how, moments earlier, spurned by Mike Scioscia with one out, Percival had blatantly shrugged twice in the bullpen as if he couldn’t believe it.

Now he was on the mound, two out, protecting a two-run lead, and everyone figured it.

The Angels’ lovely and amazing season had come down to the tight-jawed, beard-stubbled reliever.

Facing arguably the best postseason player in baseball history.

Derek Jeter is still looking for strike three.

He is still standing there, staring at the 98-mph fastball that Percival lasered on the outside corner.

Percival is still stalking off the mound pumping his fist.

The Angels are still dancing out of their dugout.

With an eighth-inning comeback and too much Percival on Wednesday, the Angels turned magic to mush, hung ghosts on the line with the other dirty sheets, stole an 8-6 victory over the Yankees in Game 2 of the American League division series.

The feeling will last until Friday, when the five-game series, knotted at one game apiece, returns to Anaheim for the next two games.

At one point they were eight outs--or maybe one pitch--from likely extinction. But now the Angels are in a position to advance to the American League championship series without leaving home.

It is a position of confidence and steadiness. It is also a position controlled by Percival.

This is his series now.

The comeback Yankees will have more shots at him. The media and fans, in an uproar Tuesday when the Angels blew a lead with Percival in the bullpen, will be focused on him.

Given his status as the team’s emotional, long-suffering veteran who dressed across from a framed Gene Autry jersey, it is fitting.

And it is just the way Percival wants it.

“If we’re going to win, lose or draw, I want to be the one doing it,” he said after the game in the clubhouse, his half T-shirt darkened with sweat, his eyes still wild.

He nearly did all three things Wednesday night, beginning in the bottom of the eighth inning, with the Angels leading 7-5 after Garret Anderson and Troy Glaus had hit consecutive homers and Adam Kennedy had driven in a run with a sacrifice fly in the top half.

Percival was warming up while reliever Ben Weber was allowing the potential tying runs to reach base. He was the only reliever warm when Weber was chased with a Raul Mondesi ground ball that sprained his right index finger.

There was one out, and Scioscia was ripped Tuesday for not bringing Percival in with one out, and so ...

Into the game came Brendan Donnelly, who because of the injury, could take as many warmup pitches as he wanted.

Out in the bullpen, in front of the cameras, Percival spoke for much of the Angel nation by exaggeratedly shrugging not once, but twice.

No, he wasn’t second-guessing his manager. He was just surprised because there was no one else ready.

“I was puzzled,” he said. “I’m the only one loose, I’m walking down the steps, and I got pulled back. That’s never happened before.”

Despite the questioning of critics like me, Scioscia feels his refusal to vary from his regular-season approach has led to the Angels’ calm behavior. And so Wednesday, even though he knew he would be ripped if Donnelly faltered, he stuck by his policy that if the Angels were leading, that Percival would not be required to get more than four outs.

“We’re looking to Percy to try to keep him as short as we can,” Scioscia said.

After Donnelly struck out John Vander Wal, Percival was short, all right.

Short of patience and ready to knock the Yankees on their shorts. Which he almost did with Soriano.

“I didn’t want to hit him, but I wanted to back him off the plate,” Percival said. “I will apologize for that.”

And then, with Jeter, whom he struck out looking on four pitches?

“I know his reputation,” he said. “I know what he does with low pitches. I wanted to keep the ball on the top of the zone.”

It wasn’t finished, of course. With Percival, as with the Angels, there is always drama.

So about that run in the ninth inning, those two runners left on base as he struck out Nick Johnson and fooled Mondesi into a popout?

“I threw about 108 pitches,” he said with a weary grin. “But against this team, you take what you can get and you go home.”

Beating baseball’s current dynasty one time in October means little. The battle has just begun. Percival knows it.

“I know all about it,” he said. “But I don’t see it as magic. They have a good team. It isn’t magic.”

He was talking about the Yankees. He could have been talking about the Angels, this relief pitcher with a squinty stare, a short memory, and a series resting in his right arm.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.