Secret to Success: They Spend a Lot of Extra Time on Practice Tees

SAN FRANCISCO -- It is beyond dizzy, beyond Babe, beyond belief.

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The Angels’ intermittent showers of early October have become a full autumnal downpour, raining line drives and bloops and despair, leaving the San Francisco Giants choking wet.

SpieziosingleKennedysingleMolinasingle.

There are no commas. There are no spaces. There is no rest.

MolinasingleGilsingleEcksteinsingleGiantsquit.

Do they ever make an out? Do they ever miss a pitch?

Everyone at this World Series should stop talking about the juiced ball and start worrying about the invisible tee.

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The Angels’ 10-4 victory over the Giants in Game 3 at Pac Bell Park Tuesday was, once again, one long gasp.

For two consecutive games, a parade of Angel hitters have calmly stepped to the plate, aimed their bats at the increasingly wide and childlike eyes of Giant pitchers, and laid a real Dr. Seuss on them.

Balls in gaps, balls off walls, tall balls, small balls, every ball falls.

“Hopefully they hit themselves out,” said a weary Dusty Baker, the Giant manager.

Two games, 21 Angel runs, 32 Angel hits, a two-games-to-one lead over a team that is now slumped in a corner with its head in a bucket.

Nah. Feels like there’s more.

Watch the Angel team bus drive up to the stadium five hours before today’s Game 4.

Notice how, even though there will be later buses, all the regulars will be on the early express.

Notice how they will file into the clubhouse and head for the indoor batting cages, steamy work, boring work, hitting balls off tees and strings and soft tosses.

“Who does it?” asked David Eckstein with a surprised grin. “Well, um, we sort of all do it.”

They do it so much, the Angels have the only batting coach in the league whose job entails telling players when to stop hitting.

“I usually only get 25 swings in there before Mickey [Hatcher] chases me out,” said Eckstein. “It’s the same with everybody.”

Yeah, there’s probably more.

And when it ends, the Angels could be the greatest hitting team in baseball postseason history.

The new Big Red Machine.

Already they have become the first World Series team to send the entire batting order to the plate twice in consecutive innings.

Already, they have become only the fourth team to score 10 or more runs in consecutive World Series games.

And today, they could remind up of the 1932 New York Yankees and 1990 Cincinnati Reds on their way to the most impressive team hitting record of all. Those teams share the mark for hits in a four-game series with 45.

After three games, the Angels already have 41.

“Before the series, the players were aware of what happened to me in 1988, and I told them the same thing could happen here,” said Hatcher, surprise hitting star for the Dodgers world championship team that year. “I told them to leave it on the field, show them who you are, don’t let anybody intimidate you.”

Surrounded by reporters late Tuesday, Hatcher glanced down at a St. Christopher medal that was appropriately adorned with the picture of a hitter.

“But I never dreamed we’d do it like this,” he said.

At first blush, you want to say, wake up, this is only happening because the last two Giant starting pitchers have come up tiny.

After all, hasn’t it been Russ Ortiz and Livan Hernandez who have really started it all, throwing only 12 out of 36 first-pitch strikes, falling behind and allowing the Angels to swing easy?

Indeed, that would be true, if this had only happened the last two nights and only to those two tormented souls.

But what about Roger Clemens. David Wells? Andy Pettitte? Rick Reed? Joe Mays?

During these playoffs, the Angels clubbed at least eight hits in less than six innings against each of them.

During these playoffs, an Angel has just tied the great Derek Jeter with a 12-game postseason hitting streak, and his name is Darin Erstad.

During these playoffs, another Angel already has 16 RBI, three short of the postseason RBI record, and his name is ... Scott Spiezio?

Then came Tuesday night, when a third Angel became the first player at his position in World Series history to reach base five times in a game.

A player who, in his previous seven series at-bats, had not reached base once..

Yeah, Bengie Molina.

When asked if he now felt part of the offense, Molina bristled.

“I am always part of this offense,” he said. “We all are. That’s how it works.”

It works because the Angels, not yet popular enough or rich enough to be influenced otherwise, collectively shorten their swings and submerge their egos and really attempt to hit as a team.

“I don’t have an answer right now,” said Dave Righetti, Giant pitching coach. “But I have a long drive home.”

At this rate, he better live somewhere east of Denver.

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

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Hits Keep on Coming

*--* The Angels are on pace for the highest batting average in World Series history. A look: Team Avg Runs per game HR 2002 Angels 353 8.0 4 1960 New York Yankees 338 7.9 10 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates 323 4.6 3 1990 Cincinnati Reds 317 5.5 3 1910 Philadelphia A’s 316 7.0 1 1976 Cincinnati Reds 313 5.5 4 1932 New York Yankees 313 9.3 8 1993 Toronto Blue Jays 311 7.5 6 1998 New York Yankees 309 6.5 6 1922 New York Giants 309 3.6 1 1978 New York Yankees 306 6.0 3 1936 New York Yankees 302 7.2 7 1989 Oakland A’s 301 8.0 9 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers 300 4.5 8

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