MINNEAPOLIS - Orioles pitcher Jason Johnson had to wonder if the nightmare-portion of this season would ever end.
It chased him to Detroit at the beginning of this latest road trip, and it followed him to Minnesota for the first seven innings of last night's game.
Another strong performance looked like it would go unrewarded.
Then Johnson looked up, and saw Melvin Mora break an eighth-inning tie with a home run into the left-field seats. Finally the ghost was gone, as the Orioles held on to take another series from the Minnesota Twins with a 3-1 victory at the Metrodome.
"I was on the bench," Johnson (4-9) said. "I was just waiting for [Mora] to come in there, a big smile across my face. I'll take it."
It was the 10th time in Johnson's 15 starts that the Orioles failed to score more than three runs, but this time they did enough to hand him his first victory since June 29. He held the Twins to one run on six hits in seven innings, throwing 90 pitches in his second start after missing 2 1/2 weeks with tendinitis in his right shoulder.
Chris Singleton also hit a home run for the Orioles, who took two of three this week to claim the season series from the Twins, 5-1. Against the first-place teams in the American League, the Orioles are now 16-11.
"He just needs to keep pitching the way he's pitching," Orioles manager Mike Hargrove said of Johnson. "I don't know that we're looking for him to all of a sudden to turn into Jason `No-No' Johnson. What he's doing right now is good enough. He needs to continue to do that."
Hargrove will also take what he's getting from Mora, who has 16 home runs after coming into the season with 15 for his career.
Mora led off the eighth inning, and took a big cut off a 2-0 slider from Twins starter Kyle Lohse. Two pitches later, Mora crushed a 91-mph fastball an estimated 370 feet over the left-field wall.
Those were big swings for a leadoff man in a tie game, but Hargrove was forgiving.
"When he swung on 2-0 at a slider, I wanted to strangle him," Hargrove said. "But I wanted to kiss him when he hit the ball out."
Lohse (10-7), a baby-faced right-hander who could wind up leading the Twins injury-plagued rotation in innings pitched this season, took the kind of hard-luck loss that Johnson has grown accustomed to this season. Lohse allowed two runs on four hits in seven-plus innings.
