Seventh Inning

The Orioles' 6-game-old season hit its low point yesterday and resurrected questions about the composition of an already well-worn pitching staff.What started as a possible break-even homestand and a personal landmark for starting pitcher Doug Linton degenerated into a 9-5 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays pocked by a calamitous five-run seventh inning.A botched rundown play between third base and home plate helped extend an inning that turned a 4-2 lead into an insurmountable 7-4 deficit before an announced paid crowd of 40,273, about half of whom may have made it to Camden Yards.

MINNEAPOLIS -- Welcome to September baseball in the land franchise relocation created then forgot. Here, where fans may throw their voices only to hear them come back, Scott Erickson threw another dominant outing against his former club, the Minnesota Twins, in a 5-0 win before 9,263 at the Metrodome. As long as the game survives in the Great White North, the Orioles will always have somewhere to go heal.For Erickson, who threw a three-hitter, history repeated itself. The complete-game shutout was his second against the Twins in 21 days.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Orioles did most of their damage offensively yesterday when they were doing the very least.Four consecutive walks by Florida Marlins left-hander Armando Almanza in the fifth inning followed leadoff singles by B. J. Surhoff and Lenny Webster and helped the Orioles to a 6-1 victory in their home exhibition opener.The game was scoreless when Almanza entered and shook up the proceedings. A balk moved Surhoff to second, and Webster's single gave the Orioles a 1-0 lead.

One remedy for a slumping offense is a last-inning rally. That's what North County is counting on.The No. 7 Knights scored three times in the top of the seventh to sneak away from Glen Burnie with a 3-1 win over the No. 5 Gophers yesterday afternoon.Freshman pitcher Brittany Boyd gave up four hits and was touched for an unearned run in the fourth but kept it close for the Knights, who broke through with three singles, a sacrifice bunt and a sacrifice fly in the seventh."This was the most fired up we were in two weeks," said North County coach Brian Love, whose Knights (11-4)

Mariners: Joey Cora's seventh-inning single gave him a hit in all 15 games this season.Twins: Shortstop Pat Meares returned to the lineup after missing Tuesday's game at Tampa Bay because of a strained left ankle. Meares went 2-for-4 and is hitting .500 over the past nine games. Mike Morgan has pitched between six and seven innings in his first three outings and allowed two runs in each without receiving a decision. Minnesota lost all three games by one run, two of them in extra innings.jTC Pub Date: 4/17/98

NEW YORK -- The bullpen phone used to ring around the fourth or fifth inning and Alan Mills didn't have a reason to notice. His head wouldn't turn. His hands stayed inside his jacket. Call-waiting meant waiting until at least the seventh.Those days and nights are gone, and there's no telling when they'll return.The Orioles' pitching staff, minus a long man coming out of spring training and since ravaged by injuries and littered with emergency starters, can't afford such a luxury. Manager Ray Miller will take relief where he can find it, and the situation has been finding Mills earlier than normal.

A first-half bugaboo returned to Camden Yards last night. Once again an undermanned opponent ran wild and left the Orioles with nothing except a crushing loss.Should the Orioles' belated push for a wild-card berth fail, they doubtless will recall their failings at home against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The expansion team only deepened the impression last night by stealing a 4-2 decision that briefly looked like it might go the Orioles' way.Another opponent exploited the Orioles' glaring defensive weakness -- an inability to hold runners and then catch base stealers.

With half its team freshmen, every game is a learning experience for Wilde Lake.Yesterday's lesson?"We showed we can take a lead and hold it even if some things go wrong," said freshman catcher Sara Taliano, whose Wildecats survived a three-error seventh inning and held on for a 5-3 victory at Centennial.The 15th-ranked Wildecats had made costly mistakes in losing their last two games to Glenelg and River Hill. Yesterday, they took advantage of Centennial errors and, until the last inning, played solidly in the field.

Rangers: Their pitchers hadn't allowed a home run in 87 innings before Mike Kelly connected off Roger Pavlik. It was the first homer against Texas pitching since Toronto's Mike Stanley homered in the seventh inning on April 11 in Arlington. They went into the game leading the AL in fielding, but made three errors.White Sox: Albert Belle is batting .254 (15-for-59) with two homers and 16 RBIs against his former team, the Indians.Indians: Kenny Lofton had his first steal since April 11.Pub Date: 4/24/98

Freshman relief pitcher Steve Swiech of Mount Hebron gave the Vikings what they needed yesterday -- two scoreless innings.His effort enabled the Vikings to derail No. 10 Wilde Lake, 10-7, and made a winner of Vikings starter Randy Zwitch. It was Swiech's second save, to go with a 3-0 record and 1.40 ERA."I like feeling pressure," Swiech said. "I like pitching in the late innings. My fastball was my best pitch today."Mount Hebron (8-3 overall, 8-3 league) did everything good teams need to do to win. The Vikings played solid defense, ran the bases aggressively and hit in the clutch.

Over six uneven innings, Orioles rookie starter Chris Tillman didn't make a great argument that the club should abandon its plans to shut him down after a few more starts. It's also fair to question how much gas is left in the tank of Tillman's teammates. Tillman allowed five earned runs, and the Orioles' new-look lineup was shut down by Scott Feldman and Neftali Feliz as the Texas Rangers took the series opener, 5-1, at Camden Yards on Friday before an announced 15,557 who had very little to get excited about.

At least he didn't give up any home runs. Jeremy Guthrie, who entered his latest start tied for the major league lead with 27 home runs allowed, kept the ball in the ballpark Monday, but very few of the balls were hit anywhere near his Orioles teammates. The Oakland Athletics, last in the American League in batting average and third to last in runs, pounded Guthrie for 11 hits and five runs in just 4 2/3 innings in a 9-1 throttling of the reeling Orioles in front of an announced 14,688 at Camden Yards.

Brad Bergesen pounded his fist into his glove, tapped catcher Matt Wieters' mitt, and then limped to the dugout before finally collapsing in the tunnel leading up toward the Orioles' clubhouse. "Makes you sick to your stomach," Orioles manager Dave Trembley said. "It was a sight I'd rather not relive, and I don't really want to talk about it." A potential injury to Bergesen, the rookie right-hander who has emerged as his team's most consistent starting pitcher, marred the Orioles' 7-3 victory over the Kansas City Royals in front of an announced 19,194 on Thursday at Camden Yards.

PHILADELPHIA - -With the Orioles one strike away from a potentially demoralizing loss, Brian Roberts was just trying to put the ball in play in the ninth inning against Philadelphia Phillies reliever Ryan Madson. The Orioles' leadoff man hadn't hit a homer in nearly a month. He entered Saturday's game with just two hits in his past 19 at-bats, so there was no point in thinking too ambitiously as he got into the batter's box. Watching the at-bat unfold from the dugout, Orioles first baseman Aubrey Huff was just hoping for a game-tying double.

Calvert Hall became the first team to win a fifth consecutive Maryland Interscholastic Athletic Association A-Conference championship Wednesday night when it out-dueled Cardinal Gibbons, 4-3, scratching out the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning at Ripken Stadium in Aberdeen. Pinch hitter Sean LaMarre got the inning going with a single. After Patrick Blair and Evan Cain loaded the bases, Scott Merkel, who was pinch-running for LaMarre, who had pinch hit for him, scored the winning run when sophomore Matt Bosse laid down a perfect bunt between home plate and third base.

NEW YORK - -Most of the Orioles got to Yankee Stadium early Tuesday to check out the new ballpark that they had heard plenty about but had never seen in person. Their true indoctrination to the place, however, wouldn't come until hours later when the New York Yankees scored seven times in the seventh inning to send the crowd into a frenzy and turn a one-run game into a rout. The Orioles, who had absorbed plenty of lopsided innings at the old ballpark across the street, got their first taste of the new Yankee Stadium and it was enough to make their stomachs turn.

Ken Burns' Baseball 8 p.m. [MLB Network] The edition of the documentary deals with the dominant Yankees, Dodgers and Giants of the 1950s, and it's the "seventh inning" - which means halfway through the show, Harry Caray (left) will come on and sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Or perhaps we'll get a clip of John Denver doing "Thank God I'm a Country Boy."

Toronto - Orioles starter Daniel Cabrera sat quietly, head resting in his right hand as he stared into his locker after a crushing 7-6 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays last night. First baseman Kevin Millar went over to shortstop Freddie Bynum, offered a few words of encouragement and walked away. Several other players sat half-dressed, dazed, checking text messages on their cell phones. Silence and frustration, the end result in the big leagues when you're up by four runs in the seventh inning and can't hold on. "It's the kind of game you can't lose.

FORT LAUDERDALE, FLA. -- This hasn't been the smoothest spring training for Orioles reliever John Parrish, but it's clear he's more comfortable on the mound. And in his own skin. Parrish followed a poor outing with 1 2/3 perfect innings last Wednesday, and he struck out three batters in the eighth Saturday. He's making a hard charge for one of the last bullpen spots, a quest that has become more obtainable now that the Orioles seem inclined to keep a second left-hander. "The decision's up to them," he said.

Sabrina Mullaney scored on a throwing error by Seton Keough's Diana Hiteshew in the top of the seventh inning as unranked Institute of Notre Dame upset the fifth-ranked Gators, 1-0, yesterday in a Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference softball game. Mullaney, a pinch runner for Jessica Vetock, stole second and third base before the error. Colleen Matthews earned the win, pitching a complete game with 11 strikeouts and allowing four hits for the Indians (14-6, 8-4)