Angels Enjoy Paying Back the Mariners

For a team with one of the worst September reputations in recent baseball history, the Angels sure are garnering a lot of respect in the final week of this season.

The Oakland Athletics were relieved to see the Angels leave town Thursday and felt fortunate to win three of four games from them. The Seattle Mariners seemed to dread coming to Anaheim this weekend and spoke of the Angels in reverent tones.

“In a perfect world,” Mariner third-base coach Larry Bowa said, “we wouldn’t be playing the Angels in the last three days of the season.”

Bowa’s fears were real. The Mariners’ perfect world, one in which they’ve led the American League West since June 28, was shattered Friday night by the Angels, who ripped three home runs in a 9-3 victory that dropped Seattle into second place behind the A’s.

Oakland’s 7-5 victory over Texas moved the A’s a half-game ahead of the Mariners in the West, and Seattle now leads Cleveland by one game in the wild-card race.

The A’s have two more games against the Rangers and will travel to Tampa Bay for a makeup game Monday if necessary. The Indians have two games left against Toronto, while the Mariners must play the Angels two more times.

If the Angels continue to swing the bats like they did Friday, the Mariners could be in trouble.

A crowd of 33,424 in Edison Field saw Troy Glaus and Bengie Molina blast three-run homers and Garret Anderson a solo homer to back the solid pitching of Ramon Ortiz, who gave up three runs--one earned--on four hits in six innings and Lou Pote, who threw three innings of scoreless relief.

Center fielder Darin Erstad, whom A’s first baseman Jason Giambi said “plays every game like Game 7 of the World Series,” didn’t let Giambi or the A’s down, racing back to the wall to snag Jay Buhner’s sixth-inning drive and making a diving catch of Edgar Martinez’s sinking liner in the eighth.

“To tell you the truth, I wasn’t too interested in watching the scoreboard,” Seattle Manager Lou Piniella said. “They put it too us early, and that took the fun out of watching the scoreboard.”

Though Angel Manager Mike Scioscia has said he would get no satisfaction from knocking another team out of the playoffs, an Angel sweep this weekend would exact a measure of revenge for some Angel veterans.

It was the Mariners who hounded the Angels mercilessly in 1995, pressuring them into one of the greatest late-season collapses in baseball history and eventually beating them in a one-game playoff to determine the American League West championship.

It was the Mariners who edged out the Angels for the 1997 division title and helped prevent the contending Angels from overcoming Texas in 1998 by beating the Angels nine times in 12 games.

It was the Mariners who dusted off Glaus with several brush-back pitches designed to intimidate the hot-hitting third baseman in April of last season, setting the tone for a bench-clearing brawl between the teams.

And it was the Mariners whom Angel closer Troy Percival was referring to when he told Oakland reliever Mike Magnante Thursday that “we ain’t gonna lie down . . . we’re going to go after those guys.”

They did just that, erasing a 2-0 deficit with four runs in the bottom of the first, a two-out rally that Mo Vaughn sparked with a belly flop into second on his fly-ball double to left.

Tim Salmon walked, Anderson singled in a run, and Glaus atoned for his first-inning error that helped Seattle score two unearned runs with a three-run homer to left, his league-leading 46th homer of the season.

Seattle pulled to within 4-3 on Mike Cameron’s homer in the third, but Molina followed Salmon’s walk and Anderson’s single with his 14th homer of the season, a three-run shot to left.

Anderson homered in the fifth, and Erstad added a sacrifice fly in the sixth, making him the first player in Angel history to have 200 hits, 100 runs and 100 RBIs in the same season.

“My satisfaction is from not watching another team celebrate,” Percival said. “We saw that in 1995, and we don’t want to see that again. There’s always been a rivalry with us and Seattle since I’ve been here. They’ve knocked us out before.”

PLAYOFF SCENARIOS

AMERICAN LEAGUE

DIVISION LEADERS:

* West: Oakland

* Central: Chicago

* East: New York

WILD CARD:

* Seattle

IF SEASON ENDED TODAY:

Seattle at Chicago

New York at Oakland

MOVING AHEAD

Jason Giambi hit his 42nd home run as the Oakland Athletics, with a 7-5 victory over Texas, took over the lead in the AL West by a half-game over the Seattle Mariners. D6

*

NATIONAL LEAGUE

DIVISION WINNERS:

* West: San Francisco

* Central: St. Louis

* East: Atlanta

WILD CARD:

* New York

IF SEASON ENDED TODAY:

Atlanta at St. Louis

New York at San Francisco

DOUBLY PAINFUL

St. Louis, vying for the best record in the National League, lost catcher Mike Matheny to a freak injury then fell to Cincinnati, 8-1, as Ron Villone struck out 16. D4