No-Name Offense Works This Time

NEW YORK —  Bob Sheppard has been the public address announcer for the New York Yankees since 1951 and so it seems kind of sad when, on Father’s Day afternoon, in front of a sold-out crowd, Sheppard is saying “due up for the Angels--Luke, Decker and Huson.”

If you listen real closely, you can probably still hear 55,000 people go “Huh?”

The Angels ended a six-game losing streak Sunday, beating the defending world champions, 4-2, and it’s still not quite clear how. Tim Belcher pitched eight innings and gave up one run. In the Yankee clubhouse they can’t quite decide how that happened. Good stuff from Belcher? “Not really,” one said after asking for anonymity.

A little luck? Absolutely, Chuck Knoblauch will say forever that the long line drive he hit in the bottom of the eighth inning with Jorge Posada on first base and one out, hit the wall before it landed in the glove and then the bare hand of Angels right fielder Reggie Williams. That’s not how the umpires saw it, though, so Williams doubled off Posada, who stood on third base for two minutes, refusing to believe in the catch either, and Belcher could leave the game with a 3-1 lead.

“That’s a little luck we deserve,” Matt Luke said afterward.

Luke of the not-so-famous Luke, backup catcher Steve Decker and light-hitting shortstop Jeff Huson for you Angel fans scoring at home and also for you Yankee fans who must have thought you’d stumbled on a pickup game.

Luke is the 28-year-old incredible optimist who spent six years as a Yankee farmhand and can tell you immediately that “I was up for five days with the Yankees in 1996,” and that those were all days spent on the road.

He will say that, no kidding, he got goose bumps Sunday upon hearing the crowd, smelling the grilled sausages, looking out at the monuments paying tribute to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, etc., and that there is no way to not be pumped on such an occasion even if your team hasn’t won a game since you’ve gotten called up from Triple- A Edmonton six days ago and even though, as he’ll say afterward, “most of the guys on this team don’t know me and don’t know what I can do.”

Most of those guys should have been introducing themselves to Luke after his two-run home run in the second inning off David Cone gave the Angels an actual lead.

On the Yankees pre-game radio show, Angel manager Terry Collins seemed grimly determined to sound upbeat. “No excuses,” he said four different times, each time louder, as he was asked in many different ways to feel sorry for himself over all the injuries.

Did the season begin to come apart in spring training when Gary DiSarcina’s forearm hit the swinging bat of a first base coach? Or when glittery free agent Mo Vaughn slid down the steps of a dugout trying to catch a fly ball on opening day to mess up his ankle? Or when Jim Edmonds wandered off to have shoulder surgery or when Tim Salmon dove to catch a ball and screwed up his wrist?

“No excuses,” Collins kept saying and for his perky appearance, Collins received a $100 gift certificate from a New York jewelry store and radio listeners were left with the image of the Angels as the losing gunslinger in the Old West who keeps taking bullets but just won’t quite die and instead just keeps lurching and jerking around because the last scene needs prolonging.

This is a description which bothers Luke.

He has refused for seven years to be called a career-minor leaguer and it hasn’t always been easy. The El Dorado High grad always believed he could make it with the Yankees until he was sent to the Indians and he believed he could be a star with Cleveland until he was shipped to the Dodgers and when the Dodgers didn’t want him back after he played 102 games with them last year, Luke now believes he can be something worthwhile with the Angels even though he missed most of spring training with a back injury.

And with that belief in himself comes a belief in his team, even if it is still a team of mostly strangers. When Luke arrived with the Angels in New York, he asked his good friend Arthur Richman, Yankee media relations senior advisor, for a favor. “Pray I get a couple of hits,” Luke asked Richman. A two-run home run was good enough.

Luke said he hit a 2-0 pitch “aggressively” and maybe a little angrily. “The mood hasn’t been great around here,” he said.

“But you know what?” Luke continued, his voice rising in pitch, “If we can win a game like this, against the best team in baseball, in front of a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium with one of the best pitchers around, David Cone, going for them, why can’t we beat anyone?

“You can say what you want about this lineup, but this lineup beat the New York Yankees today.”

Bravado can be a wonderful thing. And spirits are raised for a day. Now it’s back to the AL West where Luke points out the Angels can now start making up ground. On everybody.

False bravado can be a useless thing too. As long as the PA announcers around the league are saying “due up--Luke, Decker, Huson,” that gunslinger is going to be doomed. There can be no other ending.

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com