ANGELS STAND TALL IN HARSH SETTING.

Byline: PAUL OBERJUERGE

SAN FRANCISCO - Late October in San Francisco. As dark as the grave, and almost as cold.

Boys of Summer? In Frisco, it's hardly true in July. Never mind on Oct. 22.

Like, what is the World Series doing outdoors in this town? Did it occur to anyone San Francisco needs a domed stadium at least as badly as does Seattle? Or Minnesota, for that matter? Does the expression ``climate-controlled'' mean anything to anyone up here?

Where we live, where sensible Californians live, that is, it's cooling off nicely this time of year. Here in Baghdad by the Arctic, the conditions Tuesday night would qualify as winter to anyone from SoCal.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia said before Game 3 all the things warm-weather managers and coaches say when they go play in a crummy environment. It's the same for both teams, it doesn't seem too bad, we've played well in these conditions before, etc. As if it were more fluke than inevitability that the Cowboys lost the Ice Bowl and the Tampa Bay Bucs are 0-for-forever in games played below 40 degrees.

Scioscia conceded, well, yes, sometimes it was a bit chilly for night games when he played in San Francisco with the Dodgers. ``From the time we took batting practice, it would be beautiful, 70 degrees,'' he recalled. ``We'd go in for a half-hour, a little after 6 o'clock, and you thought you'd walked into the Twilight Zone. It felt like 30 degrees below zero, and the wind chill and everything. ...''

San Francisco autumns might be conducive to all-day Sno-Cones, but not to baseball, a game designed to be played in sunshine and on a dry track. Or at least in something nicer than wind-whipped evening drizzle. Those parkas and stocking caps you saw in the stands weren't just fashion statements.

Then there was the reception waiting here for the Angels and their handful of partisans. Giants fans at Pac Bell Park allegedly are demure compared to the misanthropes who frequented Candlestick Park, but it was hard to discern the difference Tuesday.

The first vendor we encountered, nearing the ballpark, was selling T-shirts with the message ``----- the monkey!'' The Angels' Rally Monkey, that is.

Later on, the message wasn't as vulgar, just more violent. Kids did brisk business (at $20 a pop) selling monkeys in Angels jerseys with nooses tightened around their necks. Many Giants fans augmented that cute scene, monkeys swinging from lanyards, by tying the monkeys' hands behind their backs.

So, yes, it was a hostile environment for your Angels. Dropped into winter in a town that loathes all things SoCal, before an audience shouting abuse at all things ``monkey,'' playing a team that was 54-33 at home this season and was starting Livan Hernandez, 6-0 in his career in the postseason.

And how did the Angels react to it all? To that stacked deck?

By thrashing the Giants 10-4 to take a 2-1 lead in the 98th World Series.

It is becoming apparent there is no such thing as an intimidating venue for these Angels. Yankee Stadium and the Bronx? The Metrodome and its weird environs? Pac Bell Park and its freakish fans and McCovey Cove? No, no and no. To date, this postseason, the Angels have won more games (three) on the road than they have lost (two).

Nor is there a player who makes them cringe. Not Derek Jeter. Not any Twin. Certainly not Livan ``Unbeaten in October'' Hernandez.

The key, again, was the Angels' ability to string together the big inning. Those crowd-shushing, opponent-deflating, back-breaking innings that seem to last a half-hour each.

They had two of them Tuesday to take control of the game, consecutive nine-batter, four-run outbursts in the third and fourth innings. Never before had a World Series team batted around in consecutive innings, and that's going back to 1903, friends.

The Angels kept marching to the plate and getting quality hacks and moving runners around. One indication: David Eckstein led off four of the first five Angels at-bats.

By then, they had sent Hernandez to the showers, obliterated the Giants' early 1-0 advantage and had more than enough cushion to offset the now-nightly Barry Bonds monster home run - a 437-foot shot to dead-center that capped a Giants mini-rally and brought them to 8-4 in the fifth.

To recap, the Angels hung an eight-spot on the Yankees in the clinching game of the division series. Then they dropped a 10-run bomb on the Twins as they closed out the American League Championship Series.

And in perhaps the momentum-turning game of the World Series, they showed a pair of fours when the game was on the line.

This club is now 0-3 in series openers, 9-0 in all the rest, and averaging an even eight runs a game. Now it is the Giants who are looking seriously at the ``must-win'' scenario tonight.

You get the feeling the Angels just took San Francisco's - and the Giants' - best shot. It can't get any tougher than it did on a frigid, unfriendly Tuesday in South Beach.

The Angels are not going to lose this World Series. The Giants are going to have to win it, and we shall see in the next two days whether they have enough to stop this Big Red Machine.

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Photo:

San Francisco fans are bundled up during Game 3 of the World Series on Tuesday.

Aric Crabb/Staff Photographer