It’s May 13, 1996, and O’s lefty Rick Krivda stepped up in his first start of the season. Filling in for David Wells and his gout-ridden toe, Krivda held the A’s to one run over six innings as the Birds held on to win 4-3 in Oakland.

Krivda didn’t have his best stuff, but needed just 77 pitches to complete six frames. “I didn’t feel really great velocity-wise,” he said, “but I moved the ball in and out.”

O’s pitching coach Pat Dobson was thrilled with Krivda’s effort. “He’s not afraid, I’ll tell you that,” Dobson said. “I was just glad to see him be aggressive and throw the ball over. We’ve lost a lot of games when we didn’t throw the ball over the plate, and he was aggressive and got good results.”

The big news at the plate was that Brady Anderson finally returned to the lineup after missing the better part of a week. He led off the game with a double and later scored as the O’s put up four runs in the first inning. Robbie Alomar and Bobby Bonilla each had a pair of hits, each scored a run, and each drove in a run in the win. (Baltimore Sun, p. 6D, May 15, 1996)

Since it was a late game on the west coast, the Sun didn’t have a story in the next day’s paper about it. Instead it had this endearing box:

Krivda had to start because David Wells is still battling gout in his big toe. “It just takes a toll on every part of my body,” Wells said of his toe injury. “It’s killing my back. It affects a lot of things, blood pressure-wise, lots of things. I’ve learned I’ve got pretty good pain tolerance.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1D, May 14, 1996)

The O’s will look to keep it going in Oakland tomorrow, with ace pitcher Mike Mussina on the mound.

Here’s the box score with the lovely totals.

No dingers today.

Orioles (20-17) vs. Athletics (19-18), 10:05 p.m.

Starting Pitchers
BAL – RHP Mike Mussina (5-2, 3.99 ERA)
OAK – RHP Carlos Reyes (3-5, 5.52 ERA)

On the front page we have more on the search for answers in the ValuJet crash in Florida, but below the fold we have an interesting time capsule.

The Sun television critic David Zurawik starts his story as follows: “Fewer people are watching television news and more are questioning its credibility, says a nationwide survey that will be released today.”

He goes on to say that while even cable news giants like CNN saw a decline, nightly network news on ABC, CBS, and NBC saw the biggest drops, according to the Pew Research Center.

The study found that newspapers and radio news held steady in audience during the same period. Fewer than 10 percent of adults age 25 to 54 watch Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, or Tom Brokaw.

“The decline has reached the point where it does not seem like you can talk about the nightly news as any kind of national gathering, especially for younger viewers,” said David Robinson, an advertising executive. “The generation that grew up with more than just the networks to choose from certainly seems to be making those other choices at the expense of network news.”

ABC News spokesman Arnot Walker is digging in. “It is not news to us that there has been a decline in network news since the introduction of cable,” he said. “That’s the bottom line, and more people are still getting their news from us than from other sources.”

Always fun to see a good media landscape report. It is important to note that this is an environment ripe for the taking. As both viewership and perceived credibility wane, it seems like a good opportunity for a whole reactionary TV news project to step in…. 

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

In a great callback for folks in the Mid-Atlantic, Erol’s — the former video rental store — has pivoted to becoming an internet service provider.