Angels Slow Out of Blocks : Baseball: California starts season 0-3 after White Sox finish series with 7-6 victory.

The speech Buck Rodgers long ago prepared to use after his team’s first victory of the season went unused another night.

Instead, Rodgers recycled the speech he used the first two nights, the one that acknowledges the baserunning gaffes, the mental mistakes and the various elements that contributed to another Angel defeat Thursday night.

“It’s not helping anything,” Rodgers said after a late comeback left the Angels 7-6 losers to the Chicago White Sox at Anaheim Stadium. “We’re going to have to get back into the win column--or get into the win column.”

Rodgers praised his team’s tenacity but lamented the defensive lapses that have plagued it. “I said it (Wednesday) night and I’ll say it again, this is going to be a pretty good defensive team,” he said.

So far, that’s an unfulfilled promise. Gary Gaetti’s first-inning throwing error contributed to four runs against Joe Grahe, and a missed sign set up another run in the third as the White Sox sprinted to a 7-2 lead after four innings. The Angels chipped away against former teammate Kirk McCaskill to make it 7-5, and Hubie Brooks’ first Angel home run in the seventh brought them within a run. But Terry Leach and Scott Radinsky held them off in the eighth and ninth to apply the final flourish to a White Sox sweep.

The loss left the Angels 0-3 for only the second time in 32 seasons. They had an identical record in 1976 after a season-opening sweep by the Oakland Athletics.

“It’s frustrating when things happen the way they did,” Brooks said. “But I think we’ll be able to correct things. We just have to get settled down a little bit.”

McCaskill never settled into a rhythm, walking four and giving up seven hits.

“I would rather have pitched better than I did,” said McCaskill, who signed a three-year, $7-million free-agent contract with the White Sox last winter. “It was definitely strange (facing his former teammates). I spent a long time here and had some great memories. I did my best to eliminate (his nostalgia), but I didn’t completely eliminate it. It’s not that easy.”

The Angels didn’t make it easy for McCaskill, pulling within two runs on Bobby Rose’s bases-loaded double in the fifth. Gaetti tried to make it a one-run game by scoring from first. He crashed into catcher Ron Karkovice to try to knock the ball free, but Karkovice held on after tumbling head over heels.

The aggressive play sent a spark through the crowd of 19,926 as well as through the Angels.

“I’m not looking at all the mistakes,” Grahe said. “I’m looking at how this team battled back. We were a base hit away from tying the game.”

They had a chance as late as with one out in the ninth, when pinch-hitter Chad Curtis walked. But Radinsky, who had been ordered by plate umpire Rick Reed to remove a flesh-colored bandage on his left pinky after the Angels complained that it was illegal, got Brooks to ground into a game-ending double play.

“We had plenty of chances to score,” Rodgers said. “McCaskill tippy-toed through five innings. We could have had seven as much as them, but they got some two-out hits and got seven. We don’t get two-out hits.”

The White Sox also capitalized on a botched play in the third. With Dan Pasqua on second and Karkovice on first, first baseman Alvin Davis anticipated Lance Johnson’s bunt and crept in from first. Johnson bunted, but Grahe missed a sign to throw to second for a pickoff, which left Rose awaiting a throw that never came. As a result, he wasn’t covering first when Davis fielded Johnson’s bunt.

Frustration outweighed confusion after Thursday’s loss. “We’re going to get it ironed out. It’s just something that happens,” Grahe said. “I know that’s an overused term, but in this case it applies.”