It’s May 17, 1996, and there are times when you can look back decades and have a hard time finding a turning point. This is not one of those times.

With his team down 13-10 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, Orioles catcher Chris Hoiles stood at the plate with the bases loaded. He battled Mariners closer Norm Charlton to a 3-2 count, and with the Birds one strike from defeat, he launched the next pitch over the leftfield wall. Orioles win, 14-13. It was the Ultimate Grand Slam.

When Hoiles stepped to the plate, the Orioles already had 20 hits, but the catcher had zero of them in five at bats. But none of that mattered when the ball sailed over the fence.

“We did a great job scoring runs when we had to,” Hoiles said. “The next thing we knew, the unbelievable happened.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 1B, May 18, 1996)

Hoiles seemed calm jogging around the bases as a packed Camden Yards went into euphoria. When he finally got to the plate, he was mobbed by his teammates.

“It’s one of the greatest feelings ever,” he said. “When you’re coming around third and just seeing everybody standing there.”

Early on, it didn’t seem like there would need to be such drama. The O’s jumped all over Mariners starter Bob Wolcott and by the third inning it was already 7-2. Baltimore starter Jimmy Haynes battled through five, giving up just two runs. But then the bullpen collapsed, giving up 11 runs in just four innings. Arthur Rhodes gave up four runs and didn’t record an out. Roger McDowell had his toughest outing, giving up three runs in just over two innings. And Alan Mills, who was recently activated off the disabled list, gave up two homers, including a grand slam to Alex Rodriguez, who, at 20 years old, is the youngest player in the majors.

The O’s had tremendous offensive firepower all night to set the stage for Hoiles’s heroics. Raffy Palmeiro had five hits, including a homer, and drove in six runs. Cal Ripken, still batting seventh, had four hits and a home run. Roberto Alomar had three more hits to raise his average to .387. And Luis Polonia hit his first homer as an Oriole.

“This American League baseball has got me dumbfounded,” said O’s manager Davey Johnson. “I thought I’d seen just about everything — 20 runs, 40 hits, football scores — but this is the most unbelievable thing I’ve seen in my life.” (Baltimore Sun, p. 8B, May 18, 1996)

The game clocked in at 4 hours and 20 minutes, one minute shy of the longest 9-inning game ever played — the Orioles’ loss to the Yankees on April 30. (The O’s 26-7 loss to the Rangers on April 19 was 4 hours and 15 minutes, so in just six weeks, the team has played in three of the five longest games on record.)

There was an injury scare when O’s third baseman B.J. Surhoff had to leave the game with a lacerated ear and sprained ankle after he was hit in the head by an errant throw by M’s second baseman Joey Cora. Surhoff had X-rays on his ankle but they were negative and he is considered day-to-day.

There have only been 32 ultimate grand slams in the last 100 years of Major League Baseball. Hoiles’s is the only one coming on a 3-2 pitch. So in many ways, it was the Ultimate Ultimate Grand Slam. 

Here is the box score with the lovely totals.

Four bricks added today, including Hoiles’s big swing.

Mariners (21-19) vs. Orioles (22-17), 7:35 p.m.

Starting Pitchers
SEA – RHP Bob Milacki (first start)
BAL – LHP Kent Mercker (2-2, 7.63 ERA)

The top movie at the box office this weekend by a level of magnitude is Twister, which grossed over $37 million. Since we highlighted that fine film last week, we’ll look at the highest grossing new movie, which came in second at just over $4.2 million. That’s right, it’s Flipper, where a young Frodo Baggins befriends a dolphin.

The Navy was shook today when Admiral Mike Boorda, the first person ever to rise the rank from enlisted sailor to the Navy’s top admiral, died by suicide in the garden of his home at the Washington Navy Yard.

Earlier in the day, he was supposed to meet with a Newsweek reporter, who had questions about Boorda’s right to wear combat V’s among the military decorations on his uniform. Per the Navy’s rules, people are only allowed to wear the V’s if they served in combat, and Boorda never did see combat.

An officer that new Boorda said that the most important thing to the admiral was “his credibility with his sailors,” and that “however this played out, it would be something that weighed on his mind, something that concerned him.”

President Bill Clinton, who was naturally meeting with a group of CEOs, briefly slumped in his chair upon hearing the news about Boorda. “Mike Boorda was the very first enlisted man in the history of our country to rise to become chief of naval operations,” the president said. “He brought extraordinary energy and dedication and good humor to every post he held in a long and distinguished career.”

Boorda was 56 years old.

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

In case you’re curious as to how much Ravens tickets cost in their inaugural season.