It’s June 15, 1996, and the O’s and Royals toiled deep into the night, and after 16 innings and more than 4:40 minutes, a simple sac fly ended it, giving Kansas City a 7-6 victory.

The game went super late so the Sun’s Buster Olney doesn’t have quotes in his game story. So we’ll just have to make due with a short recap.

Royals infielder David Howard led off the 16th with a triple off Rick Krivda and later scored on a Mike Macfarlane sac fly. It was the second run since the first inning, when the Royals jumped all over O’s starter David Wells for five runs. Wells settled down after that and threw eight innings, but then closer Randy Myers blew his third save of the season allowing Kansas City to tie the game at six in the 9th.

The following day — when Olney and the Sun had more interviews — Wells was pleased with his effort. “It was a great comeback,” he said. “I just had to bear down. I didn’t want to come out of this game early. You try everything you can. Yes, it’ll go into my next game, for sure, coming back from that bad inning. It’s a good sign. It’s a positive.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 6C, June 17, 1996)

Each team used six pitchers on the night and the two bullpens combined to give up just four runs over 17⅔, innings. Soft-tossing Royals lefty Mike Magnante held the O’s to just one hit over the final 5⅓ innings to pick up the win.

The good news is that the Yankees also lost so the Birds are still just two games back in the AL East. However, they fell six back of the White Sox for the wildcard.

Every Oriole in the lineup had at least one hit, with Bobby Bonilla leading the team with three.  

Here’s the box score with the not-so-lovely totals.

In injury news, both catcher Chris Hoiles and second baseman Robbie Alomar are nursing injuries, Hoiles with his foot and Alomar with his ankle. Neither were in the starting lineup tonight, but Alomar did come in as a pinch hitter and finished the game in the field.

“I don’t even know how I got through the whole game,” Hoiles said of Friday night’s game after he had gotten hit by a pitch on his foot. “What hurt most was squatting, because the flap on [the shinguard] hit right on the bruise.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 8D, June 16, 1996)

The team says he may miss a couple days. Alomar, on the other hand, has been playing through discomfort for a while (and playing extremely well).

“Robbie’s ankle has been bothering him a little bit all year,” O’s manager Davey Johnson said. “The last week it’s been a little more tender. It was really bad there for a while. Hopefully, it’ll be better.”

Elsewhere, O’s legend Mike Flanagan had a talk with ace pitcher Mike Mussina to deliver some advice. “I told him that in his last few starts I didn’t like his body language,” Flanny said. “I know in the game in Seattle he was upset with [the ump], and he had other trouble [with umps]. I told him that the other team was feeding off of that.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 8D, June 16, 1996) After their talk, Moose went out and threw a complete game, so maybe it worked. Thanks Flanny!

No homers in 16 whole innings.

Orioles (35-29) at Royals (30-38), 8:05 p.m.

Starting Pitchers
BAL – RHP Rocky Coppinger (7.20 ERA)
KCR – RHP Tim Belcher (6-2, 4.41 ERA)

Four years after he was a major player in the 1992 election, Texas billionaire Ross Perot’s charm has worn out this time around. He has volunteers out around the country trying to get his name and the Reform Party on the ballot in all 50 states. 

In this front page Sun article, reporter Susan Baer goes to Lexington, Ky., and visits a Perot speaking event at the U.S. Jaycees convention at Rupp Arena. He spoke in front of “several dozen beyond the conventioneers.”

One volunteer, Charles Arbegust, who worked on the 1992 campaign as well, said he was able to get some people to sign the petition, but that “some people are violently anti-Perot — many because they think he was instrumental in getting Clinton elected.”

Perot did his usual thing, demonizing the poor and government assistance and how they are causing a “financial meltdown.” 

“These problems must be solved,” he said in his speech. “We are not going to pass this mess on into the 21st century. If these were instruments on a fighter plane, you would eject right now.”

Anyway, I can’t imagine many more front page Perot stories in the future as this dude fades into irrelevance.

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

Let them eat a really big cake.