Angels Go Down Swinging : Brawl Enlivens Opener as Reuss, White Sox Win, 9-2

They changed the uniform. They changed managers. They changed the lineup. They even changed their ways, throwing the season’s first brushback pitch and waging their first bench-clearing brawl before the sun had set on opening day.

No matter. The streak lives.

The Angels, winless in the regular season since Sept. 18, 1988, lost consecutive game No. 13 Tuesday, beginning a new season by extending an old record with their 9-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox before an Anaheim Stadium crowd of 33,265.

The streak that has already claimed two managers--Cookie Rojas, 0-4, and Moose Stubing, 0-8--has reached out and touched a third, Doug Rader.

Mike Witt, the Angels’ No. 1 starting pitcher, couldn’t stop it. Spring Wunderkind Dante Bichette, a surprise starter in left field, couldn’t stop it. Home runs by Devon White and Claudell Washington couldn’t stop it.

And now, the burden has been passed to Chuck Finley, the 26-year-old pitcher who had a 9-15 record last year and will start for the Angels tonight.

What a fine mess the Angels have gotten themselves into.

Not that Rader didn’t try to shake things up. Tuesday, he shook good and plenty--writing Bichette and Tony Armas into the starting lineup, writing Washington and Chili Davis out of it, and leading a charge to the mound in the ninth inning when Chicago’s Ivan Calderon objected to the location of one of Angel reliever Bob McClure’s pitches.

The location was Calderon’s left hand. The timing was seconds after McClure had served up a two-run homer to Harold Baines.

Putting two and two together, Calderon glared at McClure, then flung his helmet at him and then rushed him, bringing the two together on the mound.

Rader, springing from the Angel dugout, nearly beat Calderon there. Soon, both teams were surrounding the mound, engaging in the first Anaheim Stadium scrummage of 1989.

“I’m too old for that . . .,” Rader said. “I was getting dragged around pretty good. But you have to protect your pitcher.”

On an afternoon when the Angels were beaten by the oldest opening-day battery in major league history--Jerry Reuss, 39, pitched a seven-inning two-hitter, catcher Carlton Fisk, 41, hit a solo home run--Rader took solace in the knowledge that, unlike last September, the Angels didn’t go down without a fight.

“I don’t think anybody on this team is afraid to show some emotion,” Rader said. “Everybody cared enough to be out there (on the field). The fact I was involved is irrelevant.

“If you can find a plus, even in an area like that, I think that’s important.”

McClure and Calderon were ejected for their roles as instigators, but Rader seemed to delight in the whole scene, especially the message pitch delivered by McClure, the 35-year old import from the National League, where they do things differently.

“I was surprised at the audacity of the umpires, to think he was throwing at him,” Rader said, failing to suppress a grin.

Just a little old-time baseball, Rader suggested.

“When I played, these things didn’t happen,” he said. “Being hit by a ball didn’t instigate a fight. But that was back in the dark ages. We played without any rules then. There was no knockdown rule.

“You show that kind of emotion after getting hit by a pitch and you were probably going to get creased with good regularity after that. You’ve got to show it didn’t bother you.”

McClure, who dodged Calderon’s helmet but not a couple of blows to the head, shrugged off the incident as “part of the game.”

“When I first came up,” McClure said, “you get hit around a little, you dust somebody off and you go on with the game. I was trying to brush him back. The ball just got away a little.”

McClure also brushed back questions about Calderon’s quick display of temper.

“I got hit on the head a couple of times, but I’ve been hit harder by my kids,” he said. “That’s (Calderon’s) prerogative. He was just trying to protect himself.”

Around the Angel clubhouse, McClure was applauded for his pluckiness.

“I like what Mr. McClure did,” Angel relief pitcher Greg Minton said. “Of course, the ball just happened to get away from him, but I like it.”

And from losing pitcher Witt, who allowed four runs and nine hits in 6 2/3 innings: “That’s a good sign. (McClure’s) never been in this organization or on this staff before. I haven’t seen that very often around here.”

In the White Sox clubhouse, Torborg talked of seeing good signs amid the fray.

“That’s good,” he said of the mini-melee. “That means the game meant something to both teams.”

For the Angels, that feeling has largely been missing since last September, when the longest losing streak in franchise history first began.

The streak is still alive but, finally, the same can now be said for the Angels.

Angel Notes

Potential controversy loomed in the Angel dugout before Tuesday’s game when Doug Rader posted his opening-day lineup--and neither million-dollar outfielder, Chili Davis or Claudell Washington, was on it. Instead, rookie Dante Bichette and veteran Tony Armas had been penciled into the No. 5 and No. 6 slots in the batting order. Armas was there, Rader explained, because his track record (3 for 5) against Chicago starter Jerry Reuss was substantially better than Washington’s (2 for 14). And Bichette for Davis? “It’s nothing against Chili,” Rader said, “but I’ve got to get a couple of people into the lineup. Dante’s been swinging the bat as well as any human being can. They have a left-handed pitcher going. If the kid can do a little something against him, good. He made the ballclub for a reason.”

Davis was less than enthralled with that reasoning, but decided, for the record, to let the issue lie. “I’ve got to leave it alone,” he told reporters. “You’d just better ask the manager.” Washington, meanwhile, let his bat do the talking, delivering a pinch home run in his first Angel at-bat in the eighth inning. After the game, Rader announced that both Davis and Washington would be starting tonight’s game, with right-hander Eric King starting for Chicago. King replaces scheduled starter Melido Perez, who was scratched by Manager Jeff Torborg because of a muscle strain.

Angel reliever Greg Minton, on Tuesday’s ninth-inning brawl: “It was tame. I’ve got to be honest. It was tame, as far team-to-team things go. The really good ones, you have four to five fights breaking out across the whole ball field, but I’m sure it wasn’t tame to the two guys in the middle of it.” . . . The Angels Tuesday unveiled their redesigned uniform, which features a button-down top, a black belt and a bigger, brighter ‘A’ on the cap. Opinion: Thumbs up on the buttons and the belt, but the new A is a tad gaudy. . . . In keeping with this year’s All-Star game theme, nine former Angel All-Stars participated in the first-ball ceremony: Rick Burleson, Doug DeCinces, Brian Downing, Ken Forsch, Wally Joyner, Bobby Knoop, Johnny Ray, Bill Singer and Clyde Wright. A 10th All-Star, Mike Witt, was occupied warming up in the bullpen.