It’s June 25, 1996, and veteran righty came within two outs of a complete game as the Texas Rangers reasserted their dominance over the O’s with a 5-2 win.

The Rangers kept the pressure on O’s starter David Wells all night, putting 12 men on base in just 6⅔ innings. Wells battled through, but gave up five runs and took the loss.

Brady Anderson hit his 26th homer of the season for the Birds. Pudge Rodriguez hit a pair of homers for Texas.

The Sun game article doesn’t have any quotes, so I guess there wasn’t much worth saying about this game. 

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

In other O’s news, struggling lefty Kent Mercker, who has mysteriously lost velocity this year, got a cortisone shot in his throwing shoulder. He said he immediately felt more life on his fastball. “The wonders of cortisone,” he said. (Baltimore Sun, p. 5C, June 26, 1996)

In a very bizarre tidbit in Buster Olney’s O’s roundup in the Sun, O’s manager Davey Johnson talked about his plan for roster construction and how it didn’t include a high payroll or trades. “Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward,” Johnson said. Huh? “I want to win, but I don’t to be spending [sic] any more money to get there.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 5C, June 26, 1996)

Um, ok. But what about moves that were made last year before you were manager?

“I knew how much the Mets wanted to get rid of him,” Johnson said of O’s slugger Bobby Bonilla, for some reason. “They wanted to get rid of anybody making $1 million or more. … Bobby’s a good player, don’t get me wrong,” um, ok, “But to me, you make the deal if you had six outfield prospects — and then you give up two. I really don’t think anyone can give up good young prospects to get over the hump, and be successful.” I guess he wanted to make Bobby Bo upset all over again.

And in other news, O’s owner Peter Angelos is concerned about an MLB team moving to Northern Virginia. The Sun’s Peter Schmuck detailed how Angelos sent a report to fellow owners showing the economic damage a second team in the Baltimore/Washington area would do to his team.

Though at this point D.C. is a twice-failed baseball market, people are really interested in tapping into the wealth in the Northern Virginia suburbs.

“The Orioles are doing exceptionally well,” Angelos said. “We’re the premier Franchise in baseball.” Amen to that. “Why does anybody want to change that? The question is, can the area support two major-league teams? And the answer is clearly no. That’s an economic fact.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 5C, June 26, 1996)

Brady is back on the wall.

Our boy is all grown up with 26 homers.

Orioles (40-33) at Rangers (46-30), 8:35 p.m.
BAL – RHP Rocky Coppinger (2-0, 5.65 ERA)
TEX – RHP Ken Hill (8-5, 4.09 ERA)

Per an AP story on the front page, a jury ordered the city of Philadelphia to pay $1.5 million in damages to a survivor and relatives of two people who were killed when the Philly police dropped a bomb on the MOVE rowhome in 1985. The bomb started a fire that killed 11 people and destroyed an entire neighborhood.

The jury deliberated for nine days before deciding that the police used excessive force and violated MOVE’s constitutional rights.

Ramona Africa was the only adult to survive and she was awarded $500,000 for pain and suffering from disfiguring burns. Relatives of John Africa and his nephew Frank Africa, who were both killed by the police, received a total of $1 million.

“Long live John Africa,” said Ramona Africa when the verdict came through.

“They will not be able to put this case behind them,” said Fincourt Shelton, the lawyer for Frank Africa’s estate. “The dollar amount doesn’t matter.”

The AP article carries too much water for the police and justifies what happened by using terms like “armed fortress” and that the bomb was dropped just to “open a hole for tear gas.” For a better accounting of one of the most disgraceful moments of police terror in this country’s history, I encourage you to watch the documentary “Let the Fire Burn.”

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

Ah yes, who can forget street luge through the streets of Providence, R.I. as part of the X Games, “formerly known as the Extreme Games”?