It Looks Like Classic Effort From Lackey

The Chicago Cubs, who have been playing baseball since 1876, and pitcher Greg Maddux, who seems to have been around almost as long -- OK, this is only his 19th big league season -- both made their first visits to Angel Stadium on Friday night, thanks to the wonders of interleague play.

But this was hardly a maiden voyage for Cub Manager Dusty Baker, whose last visit to Angel Stadium was on Oct. 27, 2002, when his San Francisco Giants lost Game 7 of the World Series to the Angels.

“It was strange walking in here today,” Baker said before the Angels’ 3-2 victory over the Cubs before a sellout crowd of 43,764. “I kept looking for monkeys or noise sticks.”

In case Baker needed another reminder of that painful night, which turned out to be Baker’s last game with the Giants, there was a rather large one in the form of a 6-foot-6, 235-pound right-hander on the Angel Stadium mound: John Lackey.

It was Lackey who limited the Giants to one run in five innings of a 4-1 World Series-clinching victory two Octobers ago, and it was Lackey who stopped the Cubs, giving up two runs and seven hits and striking out six in seven innings for his first win since May 7.

After giving up single runs in the first and second innings, Lackey (4-7) blanked the Cubs on two hits over the next five. He pitched out of a runner-on-third, one-out jam in the sixth when he got Paul Bako to ground out and struck out Jose Macias.

Reliever Scot Shields struck out two in a perfect eighth, new closer Francisco Rodriguez added a 1-2-3 ninth for his fourth save, and Jose Guillen and Casey Kotchman provided clutch run-scoring hits in the fourth.

Lackey’s fastball touched 94 mph at one point, he mixed in a sharp curve, and his command of both pitches provided a stark contrast to his outing in Chicago two starts ago, when Lackey was bombed for eight runs and nine hits in three innings.

“There were some similarities to the way John pitched tonight and the way he pitched in Game 7,” Angel Manager Mike Scioscia said. “In Game 7, he bent a little bit but didn’t break. He got some key outs to end some rallies and did a terrific job to give up one run in five innings. Tonight, he got stronger as the game went on, and you could see it in his results.”

The key, Lackey said, wasn’t so much the five scoreless innings but the two innings in which the Cubs did score.

“The biggest thing was giving up one run and not a crooked number in the first two innings,” Lackey said. “The first couple innings have been a problem spot for me.”

Going against Maddux, the four-time National League Cy Young Award winner who needs six victories to become the 22nd pitcher in baseball history with 300 wins, Lackey, as his manager knew, had little room for error.

Maddux has been around so long that Scioscia faced the crafty right-hander as a player -- when Scioscia was catching for the Dodgers and Maddux was in his first stint with the Cubs, from 1987 to ’92.

“From his velocity to his action on the ball, you could see it would be an incredible combination,” Scioscia said, recalling Maddux’s earlier years. “You add his makeup, and you can see why he’s had a Hall of Fame career. Though his velocity has dropped over the years, his ball still has terrific action. He’s a magician out there.”

The Angels, though, had a rabbit in their hat. After Todd Hollandsworth’s run-scoring single in the top of the first, Chone Figgins led off the bottom of the first with a triple to right and scored on Vladimir Guerrero’s sacrifice fly to make it 1-1.

Chicago shortstop Ramon Martinez led off the second with a double to left-center, took third on Bako’s bunt single and scored on Macias’ fielder’s choice for a 2-1 Cub lead. Maddux retired 10 consecutive batters from the first through fourth innings, but the Angels rallied in the fourth.

Guerrero singled with one out and stole second. Garret Anderson struck out looking during an at-bat in which he swung through an 81-mph tailing pitch and gave the Angel dugout a perplexed look, as if to say, “What the heck was that?”

But Guillen, hitless in 11 career at-bats against Maddux, followed with a run-scoring triple to center, and Kotchman, whose two-run double in the seventh Thursday keyed a 5-4 win over Milwaukee, ripped a changeup into right for a run-scoring single and a 3-2 Angel lead.