Darrell Rasner

Kevin Millar has regained his timing at the plate. Now, he needs to work on his dance rhythm. Trying to spice up the introductions before yesterday's home opener and unable to find anyone who would take his request, Millar decided to emulate the steps that Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis uses to ignite the crowds at M&T Bank Stadium. Millar reached for a few blades of outfield grass and pretended to wipe them across his jersey. Then he broke out some of Lewis' signature moves before jogging down the carpet with a young male fan. "I said, `Bro, don't run until I do my dance,'" Miller said as he sat at one of the clubhouse tables and finished his dinner after the Orioles' 6-2 victory over the Detroit Tigers.

If you've watched baseball long enough, you knew this would happen. You knew a two-month funk wouldn't stretch until September. You knew the national funeral procession for the New York Yankees was a wee bit premature. OK, so they're not as good as they have been in the past decade. They have an old and banged-up roster and some big-money guys who don't play anymore. They probably aren't a playoff team. Not with the Boston Red Sox dominating the American League East and the Cleveland Indians and Detroit Tigers looking like a division winner/wild-card combo.

NEW YORK -- His curveball often bounced in the dirt, not even tempting New York Yankee hitters to offer a swing. When he threw his fastball, it either missed the strike zone or ended up right in the center of it, a welcome sight for a struggling Yankees offense that was desperate for a breakout game. It was a helpless feeling last night for young Orioles left-hander Garrett Olson, who never gave his team a chance to continue its winning ways. Olson allowed six earned runs in just 2 2/3 innings, both tying career-worst performances, and the Orioles were hammered, 8-0, before an announced 50,682 last night at Yankee Stadium.

Sometimes, you just have to marvel at the strange psychological dynamics at work in a major league ballgame. The Orioles arrived back at Camden Yards yesterday in a serious funk, their five-game losing streak dropping them into the American League East cellar and their inability to put runs on the scoreboard becoming a bigger issue with every passing day. Which is why it would be tempting to look at yesterday's 6-1 victory over the New York Yankees and...

NEW YORK -- Nick Mattera of Ozone Park, N.Y., has it figured out. In a letter in Sunday's New York Post, he identified just what was ailing the Yankees: The Curse of the Zim. The Yankees' decline, he postulated, began with the loss of Don Zimmer. "Torre, with Zim, was a great manager," Mattera wrote. "Torre, without Zim, is mediocre, at best." Voila! On second thought, the players may have something to do with it. When the Yankees, who are hosting the Boston Red Sox for three games beginning last night, have pitched, they haven't hit. When they've hit, they haven't pitched.

NEW YORK -- Chris Ray sat at a table in the middle of a mostly quiet Orioles clubhouse yesterday morning, playing cards with several teammates while reminders of what happened to him and his team about 18 hours earlier were all around him. His elbow rested right near a stack of newspapers with the headline "A-Men," chronicling Alex Rodriguez's walk-off grand slam against the Orioles' closer a day earlier. Behind Ray, about 10 of his teammates sat around a clubhouse television, fixated on highlights of Rodriguez's prodigious blast.

UM men defeat UVa., 1-0, to earn ACC tourney title college soccer Midfielder Jeremy Hall scored less than three minutes into the final of the Atlantic Coast Conference men's soccer tournament, and that goal was all that second-seeded Maryland needed to defeat fourth-seeded Virginia, 1-0, yesterday in Cary, N.C., and secure an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. The Terps (18-3) pulled off their first title since 2002 and third overall by recording their third shutout of the tournament.