Arithmetically, Angels Are No.1 : Baseball: Finley settles down for 4-3 victory over Royals and .001 lead over Twins for first place in American League West.

While the Texas Rangers and Minnesota Twins reeled off dazzling winning streaks that shot them to the top of the American League West, the Angels stayed in contention with strong defense and solid pitching.

Those attributes were their strengths again Wednesday night, but Luis Polonia’s flash and his bold dash home from first base on Dave Gallagher’s second-inning single were the spices in the 4-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals that vaulted the Angels .001 ahead of the Twins and into the division lead.

The Angels are 44-33 (.571), the Twins 45-34 (.570).

Polonia broke a 3-3 tie when he sprinted home on Gallagher’s single, a play that excited the 25,032 fans at Anaheim Stadium but hardly seemed vital.

But when Angel starter Chuck Finley recovered from a shaky start to shut out the Royals over his last five innings--and Bryan Harvey pitched a perfect ninth inning to earn his 22nd save--Polonia’s run proved decisive.

“I don’t think we’re real flashy. I don’t think anything we do is like that,” Manager Doug Rader said after his club moved atop the division for the first time since it shared the lead with the Oakland Athletics on April 20.

“We understate a lot, and I like that,” Rader said. “I’d much rather be a consistent person, have a consistent team, have consistent players that will stay the course rather than be mercurial tendencies of some.”

Polonia flew from first, barely noticing that Royal right fielder Danny Tartabull had bobbled the ball and allowed it to roll away.

“I was going, going. I told them before, if they’re going to stop me, they have to stop me before I hit third base and make my turn,” said Polonia, who had ignited the Angels’ three-run first inning with a leadoff single.

“It’s not that I don’t want to obey (the third base coach’s signs), but I got surgery on my knee twice and if I hit the brakes, I feel the pain. As soon as I make my turn, I’m going. . . .

“I wanted to win this ballgame. I was playing like it was the last game of the World Series. I was with the Oakland A’s in 1989, and I haven’t been in first place in two years. It’s too early to think about anything, but I’d rather be in first place than in last place.”

Finley (12-3) flailed through the first two innings but righted himself enough to make it through seven. He walked three and gave up a two-run home run to Tartabull in the first inning, an inning in which a slick double play begun by second baseman Luis Sojo helped limit the Royals to two runs.

The Angels rebounded for three unearned runs in the bottom of the inning, abetted by third baseman Kevin Seitzer’s throwing error on a grounder by Gallagher and catcher Mike Macfarlane’s errant pickoff throw to second. Finley gave up another run in the second inning on a two-out double by Gary Thurman and a single by Brian McRae but yielded only one more hit in five innings.

“The great ones have a tendency to right the ship and continue on,” Rader said. “Chuck is as good as there is.”

Finley, who joined teammate Mark Langston and Minnesota’s Scott Erickson as the only 12-game winners in the major leagues, enjoyed the praise but said he and his teammates won’t become complacent.

“We’re capable of winning 1-0, capable of blowing people out and capable of getting our butts kicked, too,” Finley said. “We don’t have too many guys on this team that think they’re high and mighty. I don’t see anybody going out there to show anybody up. We just go out and do our business.”

And if their business means being consistent rather than flashy, they believe they will be better off.

“Tonight was a perfect example of how we’ve played. Luis (Polonia) makes an aggressive play that seemed like an insignificant thing at the time, but it won the game for us,” Gary Gaetti said. “Is slow and steady better? I hope so. Every one of those teams that have had long winning streaks have gone so high, they had to go low. You can’t maintain that pace, even emotionally. When you get that high, you have the tendency to really let it go, let it slide.”

Gaetti compared the Angels favorably with the 1987 Twins, who won the World Series with Gaetti at third base.

“We played pretty consistent that year, but it didn’t seem like the division was as strong as it is now,” he said. “We did the little things right, got decent pitching and a lot of enthusiasm. That’s a big part of it, enthusiasm. That’s something that’s really impressed me here, that we’ve been able to jell personality-wise.”

They hope they’ve jelled into a first-place team.

“The way we’re playing now, it’s going to be hard to get our team out of there,” Polonia said. “You can see, we all know we’re going to win, same as we felt with the Oakland A’s. We believe we can beat anybody and nobody can beat us. That’s the feeling we have to have if we’re going to win.”