It’s April 4, 1996, and it looked bleak for the home team as 38,000+ fans watched them fall behind 3-0 over the first seven innings. But a 5-run rally in the 8th kept the good times rolling in Birdland. That’s a season opening sweep of the Royals.

If you want to be good, you gotta beat the shitty teams. That’s what O’s manager Davey Johnson says. “This is the book on winning the pennant. You’ve got to split with the good clubs and beat up on the not-so-good clubs.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1D, April 5, 1996)

Royals lefty Chris Haney baffled the O’s for seven innings, but you can’t keep these mighty Birds down. Ten men came to the plate in the 8th, and five hits and two walks later, the O’s sent the home fans happy for the third straight game. 

Arthur Rhodes pitched two scoreless innings out of the bullpen to get the win, and Randy Myers got his second save. Legend of “Remembering Guys”, Hipolito Pichardo, took the loss for the Royals.

“The last couple of years, there’s no way we would’ve won that type of game,” said ace Mike Mussina, who didn’t play in the game. “Ninety-five percent of the time, we would’ve folded.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1D, April 5, 1996)

Through three games, new O’s second baseman Roberto Alomar is hitting .600. Not bad. Royals manager Bob Boone had a short assessment of the 1996 Orioles: “The big difference is the second baseman.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 6D, April 5, 1996)

Bobby Bonilla, still presumably grumpy about being designated hitter, was 0-for-3, ending a 22-game hit streak that stretched back to last year. It was the second longest in club history, behind Rafael Palmeiro’s 24-game streak in 1994. Bonilla did drive in a run with a sac fly during the 8th inning rally.

Tomorrow the O’s are on the road for the first time all season. They’ll be in the Metrodome, where the right-field wall is a huge plastic tarp that looks like a trash bag. 

Here’s the box score from today’s game.

No homers today. The wall is looking mighty imposing.

Tomorrow’s Game

Baltimore (3-0) at Minnesota (2-1), 8:05 p.m. ET

Starting Pitchers
BAL — LHP Kent Mercker, 0-0
MIN — RHP LaTroy Hawkins, 0-0

The biggest news on the front page today is that U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown and 32 others were killed in a plane crash in Croatia. He was on a trip with several U.S. executives scouting ways that U.S. companies can profit off of “what the World Bank has estimated will be a $5 billion reconstruction effort in the former Yugoslavia.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 8A, April 4, 1996) Really a noble cause. Investigators ruled out that the plane was intentionally brought down.

In other, unrelated front page news, a former Berkeley professor suspected of being the Unabomber was taken into custody. His name is Ted Kaczynski and, spoiler alert, he is the Unabomber.

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

Birdland has a brand new resident.