SELE SHELLED BY YANKEES ANGELS LOSE, FAIL TO SWEEP IN NEW YORK NEW YORK 10, ANGELS 4.

Byline: Gabe Lacques Staff Writer

NEW YORK - Arturo Moreno spent the better part of Thursday at Major League Baseball's headquarters on Park Avenue, where he was approved as the Angels' new owner, met with team and baseball officials and then headed from Manhattan to the Bronx to see the first game under his watch.

Moreno must be figuring it can only get better from here.

Three innings into Thursday's game, the Angels were down more than a touchdown to the New York Yankees, and Aaron Sele, due more than $16 million the next two seasons, was already gone. Alfonso Soriano smacked the second pitch from Sele well into the left-field seats, kick-starting a New York Yankees hit parade that didn't end until they scored a 10-4 victory over the Angels in front of 29,670.

Moreno has been around baseball long enough to know these sort of games tend to even out. And after all, the Yankees were playing to avoid getting swept by the Angels, who will gladly take two out of three every time through here.

But Sele's performance was a bit of a rude awakening.

After pitching 5 2/3 innings of two-hit, one-run ball in his first start after coming back from offseason shoulder surgery, Sele discovered this rehabilitation thing won't always be so smooth.

This time, he couldn't get out of the third inning. He gave up nine hits, two walks and eight earned runs in 2 2/3 innings, with Soriano's moon shot only the beginning of the Yankees' offensive show.

Sele felt it was more about him not executing pitches than anything the Yankees might have done.

``When you can't throw a fastball for strikes and breaking stuff isn't breaking against a good-hitting team, that's what happens,'' Sele said. ``As a big-league starter, you have to be consistent. I've never had surgery before, so I didn't know what to expect. But I didn't expect that.''

Sele gave up RBI singles to Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada to put the Angels in a 3-0 first-inning hole. The game got out of hand when Sele couldn't execute the most basic of pitches, the pitchout.

After walking Raul Mondesi to start the second, the Angels called a pitchout with Todd Zeile at the plate. Sure enough, the Yankees had a hit-and- run play on.

Surely, Mondesi would be thrown out at second, and the Angels would have a one-out, nobody-on situation. But Sele's pitchout hung too close to the outside corner, and Zeile smacked the ball into right field, putting runners at the corners.

``I don't even know if I've seen that before,'' Sele said. ``That's how bad my fastball command was. The one pitch you try not to throw a strike, you do.''

That put runners at the corners with nobody out, and both scored, Mondesi on Soriano's sacrifice fly and Zeile on Williams' single.

Zeile added a two-run homer and Derek Jeter an RBI double for an 8-1 lead in the third. To his credit, Moreno stuck around long after Sele was gone.

``His stuff looked very good, except for the command of it,'' manager Mike Scioscia said. ``It'll be there. Tonight it wasn't. We didn't give ourselves a chance tonight; we never got off the ground, but it's one game.''

Indeed, the series was anything but a lost cause, and there were even some bright spots Thursday. Struggling outfielders Jeff DaVanon and Eric Owens contributed a home run and RBI single, respectively. Scott Spiezio walked three times and was hit by a pitch, and he's reached base in nine consecutive plate appearances.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo:

In the second start of his return from offseason shoulder surgery, the Angels' Aaron Sele was knocked around for nine hits and eight earned runs in 2 2/3 innings.

Ed Betz/Associated Press

Box:

ANGELS vs. BOSTON