A’s Receive Handout in Anaheim

This one won’t show up in the “Angels in the Community” display on the team’s clubhouse bulletin board, but the Angels were a picture of charity Monday night, reaching out to lend a helping hand to baseball’s tired, its poor, its huddled masses, otherwise known as the Oakland Athletics.

The Angels flubbed three consecutive popups to three different fields, paving the way for two Oakland runs in the second inning, and a throwing error led to an unearned run in the sixth, as the A’s beat the Angels, 6-3, to stop a seven-game losing streak.

A crowd of 16,368 in Edison Field saw A’s left-hander Mark Mulder take a perfect game into the sixth inning before Angel first baseman Shawn Wooten led off the sixth with a homer to left-center.

Mulder gave up two more runs in the seventh before Jim Mecir and Jason Isringhausen combined to blank the Angels over the final three innings, as the A’s started a four-city, 13-game trip on a good note.

Angel left-hander Jarrod Washburn, making his first start of the season after a lengthy spring-training bout with strep throat, gave up six runs--four earned--and 12 hits in 6 2/3 innings, but he got little support, as the Angels dropped their third in a row.

Oakland’s first two runs were gift-wrapped with matching ribbons and name tags, courtesy of a generous Angel defense that forgot how to catch a popup.

Terrence Long and Ramon Hernandez opened the second with singles, and Eric Chavez blooped a catchable ball that fell between shortstop Benji Gil and an indecisive Garret Anderson in left to load the bases.

Frank Menechino followed with a pop to shallow left-center. Gil backpedaled, Darin Erstad lost track of the ball in the twilight sky and failed to make a lunging catch. The play was ruled a hit, with one run scoring.

Johnny Damon followed with a pop to shallow right, where second baseman Adam Kennedy overran the ball and couldn’t reach back for the catch. He was charged with an error, and the second run scored.

“There’s no sugarcoating it--that was ugly,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said. “As bad as we feel about it, those [players] feel worse. They’re better than that. Hopefully we can look back at the end of the year and say this was the worst defensive game we played.”

The Angels saved some face in the second when Erstad raced into the gap in left-center, made a diving catch of Miguel Tejada’s flare and threw to second to double off Menechino. Anderson ran down Jason Giambi’s long fly ball in the left-field corner for the final out.

Menechino’s two-run homer in the fourth gave the A’s a 4-0 lead, and Mulder, mixing his 92-mph fastball with a hard overhand curve and a softer, sweeping curve, struck out six in the first five innings.

Wooten broke up Mulder’s perfect game with his first big league home run to start the sixth, but the A’s countered with two in the top of the seventh, the first on Hernandez’s RBI double and the second on Angel third baseman Troy Glaus’ throwing error.

“There was some crazy stuff going on, and there was nothing I could do about it,” Washburn said. “But these guys are going to make a lot of great plays to get me out of jams. I can’t complain. Things like this happen.”

So do batting slumps by Angel right fielder Tim Salmon in April. In an effort to snap Salmon’s five-game hitless skid, Scioscia moved his 3-4-5 batters, Salmon, Glaus and Anderson, to the 2-3-4 spots behind leadoff batter Erstad.

It was the first time in Salmon’s nine-year major league career he has hit second. Salmon singled once in three at-bats, his sixth-inning hit snapping an 0-for-18 drought, but his average was still a mere .152 after the game.

These sluggish starts have become almost routine for Salmon--he’s a career .266 hitter in April and hit .217 in the first month last season--but that doesn’t make them any easier to cope with.

“It’s no walk in the park; there are still a lot of sleepless nights,” Salmon said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s happened before, they’re still not easy to go through. I just have to keep swinging, continue to be aggressive, until it ends. This is just the way I am, I guess.”

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ROSS NEWHAN

For the young and struggling Oakland A’s, some of their swagger has turned into stagger. D4

ON THE BENCH

Scott Spiezio thought he’d get plenty of playing time this season. Turns out he was wrong. D4

BIG RETURN

Booed every time he walked to the plate, Alex Rodriguez was one for four as his Texas Rangers lost to Seattle, 9-7. D4