Smith Keeps Saving Orioles’ Best for Last : Baseball: Reliever records seventh save by ending Angel threat in ninth during 4-3 victory.

Last winter, Lee Smith told his children to prepare for a summer of Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. The old man just might be working for the Angels.

He didn’t know how much the Angels were preparing to pay, but everyone in baseball knew they needed a bullpen closer. Besides, his former St. Louis manager, Whitey Herzog, was in charge, wasn’t he?

But guess who turned out to be the one former Cardinal Herzog had no interest in acquiring?

Smith, reminding the Angels of yet another painful mistake, preserved the Baltimore Orioles’ 4-3 victory Tuesday at Camden Yards for his record-setting seventh save of the season.

Smith, baseball’s all-time saves leader with 408, reached the save total in the Orioles’ first 12 games. It’s the quickest anyone has saved seven games in history, surpassing Bruce Sutter’s previous record of seven in the first 14 games of 1980. He also is the first Oriole to pitch seven games in April, with 10 days remaining.

Not a bad guy to have in the bullpen, considering he is costing the Orioles only $1.5 million.

“I thought with Whitey there, something might happen,” Smith, 36, said. “He was the whole reason I was in St. Louis.

“I guess for some strange reason, my age scared people off, including Whitey. He told me they were going with young guys, but I bet if he knew I was signing for $1.5 million, they would have signed me.

“You can’t get teed off for people wanting to save money.”

The money was never the issue, said Herzog, who resigned in January as the Angels’ general manager. He simply thought that Smith, despite saving 136 games the last three seasons, no longer would be effective.

“We checked him out,” Herzog recently said, “but we only had him throwing about 82 m.p.h. on the (radar) guns at the end of last season. We just thought he lost it.”

Smith isn’t sure what guns the Angels were using, or from whom Herzog received his recommendation, but he’s proving he has not lost it.

“No one in the history of this game has been this proficient,” Oriole Manager Johnny Oates said. “He’s on course to do something no one else has ever accomplished.

“We’re just going to have to find a way to not kill him.”

Smith, who was supposed to be given the day off, found himself in his third consecutive game when three Oriole relievers couldn’t close out the Angels. He entered with one out in the ninth, Dwight Smith on first base, and Greg Myers batting.

Myers, the last pinch-hitter on the bench, struck out. Damion Easley then kept the rally alive with a single to left that advanced Smith to second.

Chad Curtis, who had never faced Smith, kept waiting for a fastball. He instead lunged at a 1-and-1 slider, and although the ball was hit well, it fell short of the warning track into center fielder Mike Devereaux’s glove for the final out.

“That’s a long way in from the bullpen,” Smith said, “my legs are going to blow out before my arm. My arm feels great, it’s just the rest of me that feels terrible.”

Although the Angels are making no secret that they could use a stopper, it is their starting rotation that continues to cause problems.

Phil Leftwich, projected to be a solid No. 3 starter in the rotation, struggled again Tuesday in front of family and friends from his hometown of Lynchburg, Va. He lasted four innings, yielding eight hits and four earned runs, and has an 0-2 record and 7.02 earned-run average in his first three starts.

“I’m not terribly distressed,” Angel Manager Buck Rodgers said. “But I am disappointed so far.”

Leftwich was in trouble from the outset, only to be rescued by the defense. Soon, no one could help him. He yielded a run-scoring single to rookie Jeffrey Hammonds in the third inning, run-scoring doubles to Cal Ripken and Chris Sabo in the fourth, and failed to survive the fifth.

Relievers Bob Patterson and Bill Sampen kept the Angels close by pitching four shutout innings.