It’s June 23, 1996, and a day after losing a shutout — and the game — in the ninth, the Royals finished the job. Kevin Appier dazzled for eight innings, giving up just two hits and striking out 11 as Kansas City cruised to a 4-0 win over the O’s.

“Too much Kevin Appier,” O’s manager Davey Johnson summed it up.

Appier’s shutout came a day after Royals starter Tim Belcher took a shutout into the ninth inning only for the O’s to come back and win with three dramatic home runs. This time, reliever Mike Magnante came in and finished the job.

As the Sun’s Buster Olney notes, the Orioles are now 28-30 since April 17 and are now four games behind the first-place Yankees. After getting shut out by one of the AL’s worst teams, they are off on a 10-game road trip, with the first seven games against two teams that have beat them up so far this year: those Yankees and the Rangers.

“We have to have a decent road trip,” O’s GM Pat Gillick said. “I think a decent road trip will be at least 5-5. We hope for 6-4, but if we can get 5-5, that wouldn’t be too bad.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1C, June 24, 1996)

Orioles starter Rick Krivda gave up four runs in five innings to take the loss, but even a good outing wouldn’t have mattered as the O’s couldn’t do anything off Appier. Second baseman Roberto Alomar and catcher Gregg Zaun had the team’s only hits, and they were both singles.

Zaun, perhaps emboldened by getting a hit, vented some frustration at the pitching staff after the Royals stole eight bases over the weekend. To date, the team’s two catchers — Zaun and Chris Hoiles — have thrown out just 11 of 65 base stealers on the year.

“There’s only so much Hoilee and me can do,” Zaun told the Sun’s Jason LaCanfora. “I’ve had some opportunities to throw guys out and I haven’t been perfect, but most of the time I don’t even have a chance. Other teams look at our percentages. They know they can run on us. It’s terrible.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1C, June 24, 1996)

Zaun thinks the team’s pitchers are too slow to the plate, and the catchers need support.

“We can’t do anything about it until they want to help us,” Zaun said. “They think that worrying about the quality of their pitches is so much more important than keeping a guy from getting into scoring position. If they give me a chance to throw the guy out, I’ll do it.”

Since the team has one of the worst ERAs in the league, they should probably focus more on the quality of their pitches, but hopefully they can control the running game better, too.

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

A shutout is not good for the wall.

Orioles (39-32) at Rangers (45-29), 8:35 p.m.
BAL – RHP Mike Mussina (9-4, 5.05 ERA)
TEX – RHP Bobby Witt (7-5, 5.66 ERA)

Colleges everywhere are waiting to see if the Supreme Court will take up Texas v. Hopwood, a legal challenge that threatens to dismantle affirmative action programs.

Cheryl Hopwood, a pathetic loser from Maryland, wanted to get into Texas Law School but was rejected, probably because of the pathetic loser aspect of her life. Instead of having any introspection whatsoever, she decided her spot was taken because affirmative action policies favored minorities.

She teamed up with neo-Confederate Texas attorney Steven Smith for a legal challenge. In March, a federal appeals court sided with these racist losers and said that race can’t be used as a factor in admissions decisions.

“We’re all watching Hopwood,” said University of Maryland chancellor Donald Langenberg. “If the decision in the Hopwood cas is, in the end, upheld as national law, very large changes in affirmative action programs will be required.” I would expect nothing less than feckless cowardice from a university administrator.

This ruling would roll back affirmative action policies that came following the 1978 Bakke v. California decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Allan Bakke, a white man who threw a fit after not getting into medical school. That decision was a compromise that still permitted some consideration of race in admissions in order to diversify student bodies. Thus, affirmative action. 

But the conservative project in America has always been about maintaining white power, so for two decades they have been mounting opposition and now they have the courts on their side. We’ll see if SCOTUS takes up Hopwood this week.

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

Watch out for ticks, everyone.