ANGELS BEAT ROCKIES IN WEIRD NINTH; NORMAL GAME CHANGES WITH MISSED FLY, INJURY, WILD PITCH : ANGELS 6, COLORADO 5.

Byline: Joe Haakenson San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Dante Bichette's fly ball to medium left field had the fans at Edison Field streaming for the exits, if they hadn't left already.

Trailing by two runs, the Colorado Rockies were down to their last out, and Angels left fielder Darin Erstad pounded his glove in anticipation of the club's eighth consecutive victory. The problem was, Erstad never saw the ball in the twilight sky. It landed untouched and two baserunners scored on the play to tie the game at 5.

Bizarre? Not as bizarre as the bottom of the ninth inning, when the Angels managed to pull out a 6-5 victory Sunday before 42,493 at Edison Field.

The Angels won the game in the bottom of the ninth when Jim Edmonds scored from third on a wild pitch that got past shortstop-turned-catcher Neifi Perez. Perez was forced into playing catcher after the Rockies pinch-hit for starter Kirt Manwaring in the top of the ninth, and backup catcher Jeff Reed got knocked out of the game in a home-plate collision with Dave Hollins earlier in the bottom of the ninth.

Hollins opened the bottom of the ninth with a walk off Jerry Dipoto, and Edmonds followed with a liner into the right-center field gap. Third base coach Larry Bowa waved home Hollins, who initiated a nasty collision with Reed. Reed held on to the ball but had a bad cut on his right cheek.

``It was one of the worst cuts I've ever seen,'' Rockies manager Don Baylor said. ``It looks like somebody took a razor to it. It's three or four inches long. When I went out there, it was almost like a horror flick.

Reed received 12 stitches to close the wound.

Baylor has two emergency catchers - Jason Bates and Greg Colbrunn - but both had already played in the game and were taken out. Baylor decided to move Perez to catcher because he has good hands. Perez said he had caught when he was 13, about 10 years ago.

Dipoto walked Tim Salmon intentionally to bring up Cecil Fielder. On a 1-1 count, Dipoto threw a slider in the dirt and it got away from Perez, allowing Edmonds to score the game-winner.

``I'm just trying to get him out, I can't throw it not to get it past him,'' Dipoto said. ``You roll the dice. Neifi's not a catcher. I know I couldn't go back there.

The win was the Angels' eighth in a row, their longest winning streak since a 10-game streak July 5-17 last season. The victory also moved the Angels (34-26) to within 2-1/2 games of first-place Texas in the AL West, the closest they've been since May 8 when they were two games out. But this was most certainly the strangest in the streak.

Angels reliever Rich DeLucia was deprived of his first save of the season when Erstad lost Bichette's fly ball, but he wasn't about to blame anyone.

``He had no chance in a sky like that,'' DeLucia said. ``The ball was really dark too. It goes up in that gray sky, with the lights behind it, it's pretty tough.''

Said Edmonds: ``I never saw it either. But he would have caught that ball if the game started at 1 o'clock (instead of 5:05).''

Many Angels said the ninth inning was one of the weirdest innings they've ever played in, but not Hollins, who played for the Phillies in the early 1990's.

``It was a crazy inning,'' he said. ``I haven't seen anything like that since I was in Philly and Mitch (Williams) was pitching. It was every other night.''

``The ninth inning was amazing,'' DeLucia said. ``That's what makes baseball exciting. You've got a completely normal game for eight innings, and boom! Something like that happens.''

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PHOTO JIM EDMONDS

He scored the winning run on a wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth - an unusual ninth.