It’s April 22, 1996, and the O’s Jekyll and Hyde act continued, as they dropped their fifth straight game after an 11-2 start, this time losing 6-3 in Cleveland.

Jim Thome homered, Carlos Baerga drove in two runs, and Cleveland were terrors on the basepaths, stealing five bases. 

Just a few days after the Sun’s Ken Rosenthal wrote a joking “sky is falling” column, now Sun columnist John Eisenberg is telling O’s fans not to freak out, they aren’t this bad — or perhaps as good as their hot start indicated.

“They’re somewhere in between those two extremes,” he wrote, “probably closer to the positive indicator than the negative. (If their pitching holds up, which doesn’t seem quite the certainty that it did a week ago, huh?)”

Through the first 13 games, the O’s starting pitchers were 7-2 with a 3.48 ERA, in the four games heading into today, they were 0-4 with an 11.70 ERA. Scott Erickson didn’t really help things, giving up 4 runs and allowing 12 baserunners — 11 hits and a walk — in just over five innings.

The O’s better figure things out quickly because the Yankees have won three straight and are now just a game back in the AL East.

Here is the box score with the not so lovely totals.

In other news, it rained a lot before the game today so the O’s were able to have a lot of meetings to talk through their collective struggles. The coaches met with GM Pat Gillick for more than three hours, to discuss the makeup of the club and what to do with struggling pitcher Jimmy Haynes and his spot in the rotation. 

Gillick also met with backup infielder Manny Alexander, who has been grumbling about playing time. Yesterday, B.J. Surhoff got the day off and manager Davey Johnson opted to start Billy Ripken over Alexander. Manny was unhappy about it, thus the meeting today. On that note, team management also discussed whether they needed three utility infielders — Alexander, Ripken, and Jeff Huson — especially now that newly signed outfielder Luis Polonia is a call away in Rochester.

If things don’t turn around soon, it seems like we may see some changes at the bottom of the roster. 

No dingers today.

Baltimore (11-7) at Cleveland (11-6), 7:05 p.m. ET

Starting Pitchers
BAL – RHP Mike Mussina, 3-1, 3.00 ERA
CLE – RHP Albie Lopez, 0-0, 0.00 ERA

It’s April 1996 and that means we are open for business — the business of megamergers. A few weeks back — overshadowed by Opening Day — we discussed the first merger between the Baby Bell companies that were created when the government broke up the AT&T monopoly in the 1980s. Today, we have another telecoms merger, and it’s much closer to home.

Nynex is merging with Bell Atlantic, which will combine two companies that serve roughly 37 million lines from Maine through Virginia. It will create the second largest phone company after AT&T.

The two companies combine to have over 127,000 employees, and the fear of layoffs has prompted union leaders to oppose the deal.

This merger, along with the previous merger of SBC and PacTel, will reduce the total number of Baby Bell companies from seven to five. And both were announced mere months after the Telecommunication Act of 1996 reduced barriers to such consolidation.

It would take 16 months, but in August 1997 the deal would go through.

Welcome to a recurring segment where I find fun things in today’s (in 1996) Baltimore Sun!

For Eyes have been doing these ads where they put glasses on famous artwork. They are pretty good, actually. I wonder if they used AI…