Saturday, October 05, 2002
Angels 9, Yankees 6
By JOHN NADEL
AP Sports Writer
ANAHEIM, Calif. — One more win. That's all the Anaheim Angels need to reach unknown territory. Considering the opposition, not to mention franchise history, the Angels know it won't come easy.
“This is no time to sit back and enjoy it until you clinch it,” manager Mike Scioscia said Friday night after the Angels rallied from a five-run deficit to beat the New York Yankees 9-6 for a 2-1 lead in the AL division series.
“We've put ourselves in position to close it out,” said Darin Erstad, who drove in the go-ahead run with a one-out double in the eighth. “We'll see what happens.”
The Angels can win their first postseason series when their ace, Jarrod Washburn, faces David Wells on Saturday in Game 4. Should the Yankees win, a fifth and deciding game will be played Sunday night in New York.
“We have to win one more, that's all we're looking to do,” losing pitcher Mike Stanton said. “That's how we're approaching it, we're not looking at getting back to New York.
“We won 103 this year, we can win one more.”
If the Angels prevail in either game, it will mean triumph for one of the least successful franchises in baseball history over the most successful.
The Angels have played 19 postseason games in their 42-year history. The Yankees have won 26 World Series, including four of the last six.
The Yankees faced an even more desperate situation last year in the first round against Oakland. After dropping the first two games at home, they came back to advance.
But that was last year. The Yankees held the Athletics to 20 hits and five runs in the last three games. The Angels have battered New York pitching for 41 hits, including eight homers, and 22 runs in this series.
“I don't know what else they can do to surprise us,” New York's Derek Jeter said.
“Our pitching's capable of doing a better job, we haven't done a good job,” Yankees manager Joe Torre said. “We were winning 6-1, we just couldn't hold it. Our pitching just couldn't hold them.”
The Angels' pitching did a great job of holding the Yankees after they scored six runs off Ramon Ortiz in the first three innings.
New York had only two baserunners after that and John Lackey, Scott Schoeneweis, Francisco Rodriguez and Troy Percival teamed up to retire the last 12 batters.
“It wouldn't have been possible if not for our bullpen,” Scioscia said.
Rodriguez, a 20-year-old rookie right-hander, retired the Yankees in order in the seventh and eighth, striking out four, before Percival pitched a perfect ninth.
Rodriguez also was Game 2 winner, with Percival earning the save.
“It was a terrible night tonight,” Torre said. “One game gets us going home. That's what we're looking forward to.”
Before this year, the Angels had been in the playoffs only three times since becoming an expansion franchise in 1961.
They blew a 2-0 lead in the best-of-five AL championship series against Milwaukee in 1982 and were one strike away from the World Series in 1986 before losing the last three games to Boston.
That's six chances to win a series, and six losses.
And now, the Angels are one win away — again.
Adam Kennedy had three hits including a solo homer and drove in two runs. Tim Salmon began the comeback with a two-run double off Mike Mussina in the third and completed the scoring by hitting a two-run homer on the first pitch from Steve Karsay after Erstad's double off Stanton.
Scott Spiezio's soft looper off Stanton just over the outstretched glove of second baseman Alfonso Soriano with two outs in the seventh drove in the tying run. The hit was Spiezio's first in 13 lifetime at-bats against Stanton.
“It's awesome, man, there are no words,” said Salmon, the longest-tenured Angels player. “It's nothing new for us. When we come back, we battle, we go nine innings. It's against the Yankees and it's the playoffs, but, you know what, we've been there a thousand, or a hundred times this year.”
Kennedy began the Angels' eighth with a blooper that bounced out of right fielder Raul Mondesi's glove for a double. After David Eckstein sacrificed, Erstad lined a 1-2 pitch over first baseman Jason Giambi's head for his first RBI of the series, bringing the sellout crowd of 45,072 at Edison Field to its feet.
“I was looking for something up in the zone so I could at least hit a fly ball,” Erstad said. “You get to two strikes, you don't want to strike out. I just kind of reacted.”
Notes: Each of the first three games of this series have been decided in the eighth inning. The Yankees won the opener 8-5 by scoring four times in the eighth, and the Angels rallied in Game 2 with three runs in the eighth for an 8-6 victory. ... Mussina allowed four runs in four innings before leaving because of tightness in his right groin. He didn't allow an earned run in his last 27 innings of the regular season. ... The only existing teams other than the Angels who haven't won a postseason series are Houston, Texas, Colorado and Tampa Bay. ... The Yankees blew leads of five or more runs twice before and lost in the postseason. In the 1956 World Series, Brooklyn overcame a 6-0 deficit to win Game 2, and in the 1995 AL division series, Seattle came back from a 5-0 deficit to take Game 4.
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Angels 9, Yankees 6
