Angels

The women were tacking children's photographs to a bulletin board in the school auditorium. "Oh, you found 'Compassion,' " said one to another, who was sorting multi-colored slips of paper bearing different attributes. Compassion. Faith. Humor. The words had been provided to pin alongside the photos, backdrop to a day-long seminar last Saturday at Bryn Athyn Elementary School, devoted to the memory of children who have died. "A Celebration of Little Angels," sponsored by the Bryn Athyn Church, drew nearly 150 people of different faiths, most of whom had lost children or siblings.

The Boston Red Sox brushed aside the 100-win Angels in four games, dismissing their best-in-baseball regular season as last month's news. When it turns to October, no one dominates like Boston. Moments after the Angels botched a suicide squeeze, Jason Bay slid headfirst into home plate to score on rookie Jed Lowrie's two-out single in the ninth inning. The defending World Series champions beat Los Angeles last night, 3-2, in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series and advanced to play for the AL pennant for the fourth time in six seasons.

It's true that if you're an HBO subscriber, you can watch the televised version of Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes in Two Parts on demand right now, from the comfort of your living room. But why would you ever do that when you could have the privilege - that's right, the privilege - of seeing Bckseet Production's ambitious staging of Tony Kushner's entire epic alive and breathing, with both parts back-to-back, in repertory, performed by a ferociously talented cast?

ANAHEIM, Calif. - Jered Weaver said he was not upset. Anaheim's ace claimed he didn't know he had not made the American League all-star team. He said he didn't know what to say. His teammate Joe Saunders had an opinion. "It's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," Saunders said. "You can quote me on that. " Centerfielder Torii Hunter was the only Angels player selected to the All-Star Game, which will be played July 13 in Anaheim, and Weaver's omission puzzled his teammates.

The Texas Rangers didn't win the American League West the way they wanted. Not that it showed. Rangers players sprayed each other with champagne, soaking their red championship T-shirts after their 15-4 drubbing by the host Seattle Mariners last night. Texas won its second division title in three years when second-place Anaheim lost to Oakland. "It's nice," Rangers closer John Wetteland said. "It's really an accomplishment. It's what we wanted last year, but things just didn't work out. " The Rangers had a four-game winning streak broken, but it didn't seem to matter to them.

At the end of Angels in America Part Two: Perestroika , the characters talk about the politics of a changing world: "You can't wait around for a theory. The sprawl of life, the weird . . . interconnectedness . . .. Maybe the sheer size of the terrain. " This is the perfect description of Tony Kushner's monumental Angels in America . And although there's no lack of theories (both within the play and about the play), the sheer force of it as life lived, the sprawl of these complicated, passionate relationships through these two long plays ( Part Two is 3¾ hours)

In 1982, when Milwaukee rallied to win three in a row and bury the Angels in the American League Championship Series, Gene Mauch walked away. He walked away because his wife, Nina Lee, was very sick; because he was weary of the second-guessers; because California management was part of the badgering chorus. And now, now that the Angels have been knocked out of the playoffs after owning a 3-1 lead, will he walk away? "Why, do you think that's a good idea?" Mauch said, coming close to his only grin in the grim postgame scene.

David Ortiz didn't have to worry about sprinting around the bases this time. A day after his RBI triple helped Boston beat Anaheim, Ortiz homered in consecutive innings to give the Red Sox a 9-3 victory last night and complete a three-game sweep of the visiting Angels. "That triple last night killed me," the 6-4, 230-pound first baseman joked. "I was dead from running. But I feel good now. " The Red Sox won their fourth in a row and sent Anaheim to its fifth straight loss.

Regina Foster recruited Alfred off a corner in Germantown where he was hawking trash bags. "There was something about his voice, the way he was selling them," Foster said. "It sounded like he could sing. " She asked him, "Can you sing gospel?" He replied with a few angelic lines of "Our Father. " Foster had another recruit for the "Angels of Jerusalem," her Sunday morning show on WPEB-FM (88.1), a non-profit, community-oriented radio station in West Philadelphia whose wattage you can count on two hands.

Finally, some good news out of L.A. that doesn't involve the Dodgers: The Angels had a game against the Mariners in Seattle that might just turn around their season. Angels righthander Dan Haren threw his first shutout of the season - a four-hitter with a career-high 14 strikeouts and zero walks - to snap a personal four-game losing streak. The performance produced one of those arcane stats that we've come to expect from baseball: Haren became the first Angels pitcher to strike out as many as 14 with no walks issued in a shutout.