Angels Take Walk on Wild Side to Defeat Yankees in Ninth, 3-2 : Baseball: Perez strikes out 11, but he walks the last two batters to force in winning run.

John Wathan sat in the dugout before the Angels took the field for their first game after the All-Star break. The interim manager was musing.

What if the standings could be erased, and every team was once again 0-0? What if the Angels were suddenly dead even, instead of 18 games back? Wouldn’t it be nice to kiss those 52 losses goodby?

After all, Wathan said, they do it in the minor leagues. One season, two halves, separate titles.

“I think we ought to start over,” Wathan said. “Give Minnesota the first half, and start over.”

The Angels came back from the break Thursday and pried a 3-2 victory from the New York Yankees with a two-out, ninth-inning rally that concluded with Yankee starter Melido Perez walking in the winning run on four pitches to ruin an outing in which he had 11 strikeouts.

The Angels’ victory in front 31,256 at Anaheim Stadium was their fourth in a row.

The ninth-inning rally began when Rene Gonzales beat Andy Stankiewicz’s throw to first after the shortstop’s diving stop behind second. When Lee Stevens followed with a single to right, Gonzales took off aggressively for third, sliding in safely under Charlie Hayes’ tag.

“Once I saw it was going to be close I thought, ‘Boy, this could have been a really stupid play,’ ” Gonzales said.

Wathan sent left-handed pinch-hitter Ken Oberkfell to the plate for Mike Fitzgerald, and Oberkfell walked to load the bases for Gary DiSarcina. Earlier, an error by DiSarcina had contributed to one of the Yankees’ runs.

When Perez went to 3-and-0 on DiSarcina, the crowd roared. When he threw ball four, the game was over.

“It was low,” DiSarcina said. “I didn’t think any of them were really that close. The pressure’s on him to throw strikes. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, you’re going to take a strike.”

Only Gonzales stood still on the basepath, momentarily uncertain.

“I just wanted to be sure,” he said. “You don’t want to be trotting in on a pitch that I thought was low, but maybe (umpire) Rich Garcia didn’t.

Steve Frey (4-1) got the last two outs of the ninth inning and picked up the victory.

Before the game, the Angels were addressed by a visitor--Manager Buck Rodgers, who has progressed from a wheelchair to crutches, and hopes to return to managing Aug. 7.

“It was kind of inspiring to see him out of that damn wheelchair,” Gonzales said. “He just told us we’ve got to get to the things that make the Angels good and never quit.”

Rodgers’ intention was to tell his team what he thinks they know: that they are not this bad.

In the fourth inning, they looked pretty bad.

Julio Valera, who pitched 8 1/3 innings and gave up five hits, was cruising in the fourth inning. After an infield single by Danny Tartabull and Matt Nokes’ single to right, the Yankees had runners on first and third with one out, when Hayes hit a grounder to short.

But instead of the inning being over, the Yankees suddenly had a 2-0 lead. Hayes’ grounder went past the glove of shortstop DiSarcina for error No. 1 and rolled into left field, where Chad Curtis picked it up and fired to third, trying to get Nokes. The ball flew wildly past third, as error No. 2 allowed Nokes to score.

Perez (8-8) started to falter in the seventh, when the Angels tied the score, 2-2.

Gonzales’ single up the middle drove in Junior Felix, who had singled and taken third on Curtis’ single. Curtis took third on Gonzales’ hit and scored on a groundout by Lee Stevens.

So began the Angels’ 15-game home stand, their longest of the season.

But Wathan said if things don’t change dramatically, the rest of the season won’t be much different from the first.

“There are no quick fixes,” Wathan said. “We have to play steady ball for a long while, not just play better for a couple of series or a home stand.”