Giambi

News item: Troy Ellerman, the lawyer who leaked BALCO grand jury testimony to two Bay Area reporters, has been sentenced to 2 1/2 years in jail. My take: That would be 26 months more than Victor Conte, the admitted ringleader of one of the most notorious drug scandals in the history of professional sports. In some strange parallel legal universe, I'm sure this makes perfect sense. News item: In a related development, New York Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi met with baseball steroids investigator George Mitchell and his staff Friday, but little was revealed publicly about the interview.

CHICAGO - Sammy Sosa and Ken Griffey weren't invited and Barry Bonds refused to participate, removing the electricity from last night's Home Run Derby. At least all the power wasn't drained. Though more subdued than in past years, the crowd cheered every ball that landed in the seats during the All-Star competition at U.S. Cellular Field. They were loudest for St. Louis' Albert Pujols, who hit the two longest homers, but Anaheim's Garret Anderson defeated him, 9-8, in the final round to win the title.

The Oakland Athletics, in their haste to bulk up for the final two months of the American League wild-card race, may have taken a lot of the fun out of next week's trade deadline. It was the A's who were supposed to provide much of the intrigue in the days leading up to the July 31 deadline for completing trades without waivers, with three star-quality players threatening to become free agents at the end of the season and the Seattle Mariners so far ahead in the AL West that a division title is out of the question.

Greeting cards are lined up along the shelves in Sam Perlozzo's office, friends and former colleagues expressing their joy in verse after he was named Orioles interim manager last month. Not one of them offers condolences. Those sentiments will come if Perlozzo loses his job. Considering how the Orioles are playing, he might be pitied more if he keeps it. The New York Yankees scored six runs in the fourth inning last night, half of them coming on Jason Giambi's homer, and they batted around twice while taking over sole possession of first place in the American League East with an 11-3 victory over the Orioles before an announced crowd of 43,039 at Camden Yards.

No matter how satisfying it felt winning the first two games of this series against the New York Yankees, the Orioles couldn't help but imagine what another victory would have meant last night. It would have meant their first taste of .500 this late in a season since 1998. It would have meant their first five-game winning streak since May 2001, and their first sweep of the dreaded Yankees in two seasons. And just maybe, it might have meant the end of this dreaded winless streak for Opening Day starter Scott Erickson.

NEW YORK -- It often didn't seem fair. As his counterpart, New York Yankees ace left-hander Randy Johnson, severed a slew of bats, reducing almost all of the Orioles hitters not named Miguel Tejada to a series of half-hearted swings and meekly struck ground balls, Bruce Chen had a fastball that couldn't overpower and a changeup that couldn't confuse. When Chen doesn't have command of his soft-tossing repertoire, as he hasn't for much of the season, the results can be disastrous. Yesterday was the latest case in point as the left-hander was battered for two long Jason Giambi home runs, three of the designated hitter's five RBIs, and eight other hits through four innings of the Orioles' 7-1 loss to New York in the series finale before 47,996 at Yankee Stadium.

NEW YORK - John Olerud underwent a magnetic resonance imaging exam on his left foot yesterday, and New York Yankees manager Joe Torre said the first baseman injured in Game 3 wouldn't be available for the rest of the American League Championship Series, and that his availability for the World Series was in doubt. "We'll have to wait for the results (of the MRI)," Torre said. Torre has said he will not put Jason Giambi on the playoff roster, even with Olerud injured. Giambi went 4-for-33 after returning from a long absence with a benign tumor, and he's still not strong enough to play regularly.

MIAMI - New York Yankees manager Joe Torre has been agonizing over the struggles of leadoff hitter Alfonso Soriano throughout the postseason, and he finally decided to do something about it yesterday. Soriano, batting just .209 in 67 postseason at-bats before Game 5, was replaced in the lineup by utility man Enrique Wilson, who batted second in the order. Derek Jeter replaced Soriano at the top of the lineup. "Right now, it just looks like he's feeling for it and not necessarily picking the ball up," Torre said.

With their ace facing a pitcher who hadn't been on a major league mound in more than 500 days, the Orioles were in prime position last night to win one against an unusually mortal New York Yankees team. Instead, the Orioles found plenty of ways to hand the Yankees a 5-3 win in a game that featured close plays, a failure to hit in the clutch and manager Dave Trembley's fourth ejection of the season. Much-maligned Yankees right-hander Carl Pavano, who was 10 days removed from getting bashed by the Orioles' Double-A affiliate, the Bowie Baysox, was in trouble in all but one of the five innings he pitched But the Orioles, who had runners on first and second with no outs in three of their first four innings, were just 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position against Pavano (1-0)