One Is Loneliest Number

The Angels slipped out of the clubhouse late Wednesday night, very quietly. They had lost, again. They did not hang around to see whether they would celebrate together, for in defeat they saw nothing to celebrate.

As it turned out, there was nothing to celebrate. No playoff berth has been clinched. The Seattle Mariners stayed alive with a victory over Oakland, a couple of hours after the Angels lost, and the American League’s wild-card berth remains unclaimed.

On Saturday, the Angels needed one victory to clinch their first playoff berth in 16 years. They still do, after losing their fourth consecutive game, this one 4-3 to the Texas Rangers.

“We are going to get to the playoffs,” Angel closer Troy Percival said, an air of defiance about him. “There’s no panic whatsoever.”

But, said outfielder Tim Salmon, “Everybody’s frustrated.”

The wild-card picture, so scrambled Tuesday, became abundantly clear Wednesday. The Boston Red Sox lost to the Chicago White Sox, so they were eliminated. That leaves the Angels and Mariners standing in the race for the wild-card playoff entry.

The Mariners would have to win all four remaining games, and the Angels would have to lose all four, to force a one-game playoff Monday in Seattle.

“Right now, we have the luxury of having a few lifelines,” Salmon said.

The order before the Mariners is imposing, to be sure, but far from impossible. The Mariners have won four in a row, and the Angels have lost four in a row. After today’s games, the Mariners and Angels conclude the regular season with three games in Anaheim.

That leaves the Angels with this stark choice: Beat rookie Colby Lewis today, or risk facing the Mariners at a time when they would be the hottest team in the major leagues, the Angels would be the coldest, and the Mariners would be only too happy to remind people about the Great Collapse of ’95.

Seattle trailed the Angels by 13 games that August and--omen anyone?--beat the Angels in a one-game playoff.

The Angels had not lost four consecutive games since June. They had not lost seven of nine games since April, when they opened the season with the worst start in franchise history, but they lost for the seventh time in nine games on this trip. They have failed to score more than four runs in all but one game of the trip.

“It’s a rotten time for things to cool off,” Salmon said.

The clubhouse attendants had put up plastic sheets Tuesday, to protect the Angels’ belongings from champagne showers in the event they clinched. The attendants did not bother putting the plastic back up Wednesday, and the Angels did not bother to take a lead.

The Rangers took a 2-0 lead in the second inning on back-to-back home runs from Hank Blalock and Alex Rodriguez (his 57th), but the Angels tied the score on a run-scoring double by Benji Gil in the fifth inning and a solo home run from Troy Glaus in the seventh.

In the eighth, Rafael Palmeiro snapped the tie with his 43rd homer, a solo shot off reliever Scott Schoeneweis. Later in the inning, phenom Francisco Rodriguez struck out Kevin Mench, tying Nolan Ryan’s franchise record by striking out his eighth consecutive batter. But Rodriguez also hit Donnie Sadler to load the bases and then walked Michael Young, forcing home the Rangers’ final run. The Angels scored one in the ninth on Brad Fullmer’s RBI single but fell one run short of victory and one victory short of the playoffs.

The Angels have won 96 games, and outfielder Garret Anderson scoffed at suggestions the Angels might qualify for the playoffs only by the grace of other teams losing.

“To say we went in through the back door,” he said, “discredits what we’ve done all year.”

But, if the Angels don’t get in the playoff door at all, they will be remembered not for the most victories in club history but for a legendary collapse, in a franchise cursed with enough of them. The Angels get their fifth consecutive chance to clinch today, and they’re running out of chances.