Major

The Orioles sold 25,000 tickets the day after the baseball strike ended. Now for an opposing view.In Sunday's editions of The Sun, readers were asked whether they have lost interest in major-league baseball and plan to attend fewer Orioles games because of the 7 1/2 -month strike. The vote was 294-96 against the majors.Joe Lamm of Owings Mills spoke for many callers."I used to go to 50 to 60 games at Camden Yards, but I've decided to cut back drastically," he said. "I might go to two or three games this year and maybe five or so next year, but I'm going to start going to minor-league games and exploring other options for my entertainment dollar."

LONDON -- This is how the first question time of 1996 began in the House of Commons yesterday.A Labor politician named Paul Flynn got up, stared across the aisle at Prime Minister John Major, challenged the "legitimacy" of the ruling Conservative government and then, over the roar of the Commons, shouted: "Isn't it degrading of you to deny the country an election -- to deny the country the choice between an exhausted Tory government and an invigorated Labor...

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. Army major who is the primary witness in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador told the FBI that he felt little remorse for the slain clerics, a transcript of his interrogation shows.Maj. Eric Buckland, a military adviser in El Salvador when the priests were killed, said he felt an intense loyalty to the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government and viewed the slain priests as guerrilla collaborators.The U.S. government has kept the contents of Major Buckland's questioning on Jan. 12, 1990, largely secret, refusing to share it with congressional investigators and journalists because, diplomats in El Salvador said, its contents would humiliate Major Buckland.

LONDON -- Official extracts from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's long-awaited memoirs were published yesterday, painting an unflattering view of her successor, John Major, and her Cabinet ministers.Lady Thatcher did not groom Mr. Major as her successor, according to the Sunday Times account of her book, "The Downing Street Years," which is due to be published Oct. 18."He was relatively untested and his tendency to accept the conventional wisdom had given me pause for thought," she wrote.

SEATTLE -- Steve Greenberg, Major League Baseball's deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, said last night that baseball's rules forbidding foreign ownership of a team don't apply to the bid by a Japanese-led group of investors trying to buy the Seattle Mariners.Greenberg said that baseball is "backing off" from its initial position that the sale is unlikely because Nintendo owner Hiroshi Yamauchi would hold a majority interest in the team.He said commissioner Fay Vincent didn't realize the bidders have the strong minority participation of local business leaders such as Frank Schrontz, Boeing chairman and chief executive officer, and that the majority interest would be controlled by Minoru Arakawa, Yamauchi's son-in-law, who has lived in the Seattle area for 15 years.

LONDON -- In the closest general election in years, Britain's voters yesterday poured out in record numbers, and early today it appeared that they had given Prime Minister John Major, who waged a come-from-behind campaign for the Conservative Party, a slim mandate to govern them for the next five years.With results in hand from 362 seats out of 651 contested, the British Broadcasting Corp. projected that Mr. Major's Conservatives would win a total of 328 seats, two more than a majority in the House of Commons.

LONDON -- Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major was selected yesterday as the new Conservative Party leader and prime minister to succeed Margaret Thatcher, marking a change of both era and generation in British politics.Mr. Major, 47, fell two votes short of the 187-vote majority required for an outright victory in yesterday's balloting for the leadership of the Conservative Party, but his two opponents quickly conceded and pledged themselves to unity. He thus will become Britain's youngest prime minister since William Pitt the younger took office at the age of 24 in 1783.

LONDON -- "Now, if we can," said the Downing Street aide impatiently yesterday, "let's get back to the current prime minister."It was a cozy, background meeting between an anonymous source and the inquisitive media inside London's corridors of power.The problem was that there was more interest in Margaret Thatcher's visit to the United States last week than there was in her successor John Major's meeting with President Bush this week."Former prime ministers can make these statements. The present one has to get on with working out his policies," said the aide.

BRITISH voters and politicians understand that an election will be held on a Thursday in April or May 1. Every speech, policy and political gesture is made with that in mind. All polls suggest that the centrified and gentrified Labor Party under young Tony Blair, the British Clinton, will come to power.The official campaign, in the British system, will last about a month. The unofficial campaign is well under way. So there is little sense in bringing Prime Minister John Major's limping Conservative government down now. That would upset the electoral timing of everyone, including whoever did it. This reality represents a security of sorts for Mr. Major.

MILWAUKEE -- Dave Dellucci's first reaction was disbelief, then exhilaration, then a strong urge to phone Baton Rouge, La., to ignite a celebration.By his own admission, Dellucci is still unsure what brought him to the Orioles almost four weeks ago. But after a memorable offensive display during yesterday's 9-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, he knows what's keeping him here.Dellucci made the most of his first start in right field by producing a second-inning single and a third-inning home run off Brewers starter Cal Eldred, then later contributed what could have become a historic catch in support of Mike Mussina.