Orioles Slip but Show They Still Have the Fighting Spirit

Wednesday night the Baltimore Orioles threw a T.G.I.F. party. Thank God It’s Finished. And they did it with a flourish that nobody could have predicted.

The two-week, 14-game odyssey that started in Oakland and finished in Boston is finally, thankfully, a part of history. Let it be recorded that 2-and-12 (the Orioles’ record on the trip) never sounded better than it does today.

It took the Orioles the better part of two weeks to remind five other teams (forget Detroit) there was plenty of room in the American League’s Eastern Division race. Wednesday night it took them three innings to send out the message that they weren’t leaving.

Make no mistake about it, Wednesday night’s 9-8 win over the Red Sox said a lot about the 1989 Orioles. Maybe they won’t provide one of the century’s great storybook tales and win it all. But, if they were going to crack, give it up under pressure, at Fenway Park was the time and the place.

Trailing 6-0 in the fourth inning, after having lost 12 of the previous 13 games on the trip (13 of 14 overall), the Orioles appeared as overcooked as last Thanksgiving’s turkey. Stick a fork in them, they were done.

Then, strange things happened. Kevin Hickey became a cheerleader, newcomer Keith Moreland became a hypnotist, and the Orioles banged out three runs in each of the sixth, seventh and eighth innings -- just enough, as it turned out.

In the top of the fourth inning, Manager Frank Robinson picked up the bullpen phone and called for Hickey, who was more than slightly confused since Brian Holton had just entered the game. As the left-handed reliever trotted toward the dugout, Boston right fielder Dwight Evans hollered, “Hey ‘Hick,’ where you going?”

“I don’t know,” Hickey answered, “there’s already three outs.”

The only thing Hickey knew for sure was that he wasn’t the “player to be named later,” because the Orioles hadn’t made any trades. “What do you want?” Hickey asked Robinson.

“Liven up this morgue,” said Robinson, referring to a dugout that had grown silent.

To say that Hickey is hyper is to say that the Statue of Liberty is immobile. He’s a mover and a shaker, and he makes noise. “I don’t care what anybody says, when you hear a friendly voice it has an effect,” said Robinson, one of the game’s great stonefaces whose reputation was partially built on his ability to shut out distractions.

At about the same time, coach Cal Ripken Sr. was shouting from the third-base box, “This is Fenway! Anything can happen!”

In the sixth inning, Mickey Tettleton played screen-o with the Jolly Green Giant fence in left field to get a run on the board. Bill Ripken scratched his nose diving into first base for an infield hit that helped add two more.

An inning later, with two men on and none out, left-hander Rob Murphy was brought in to face the right-handed-hitting Moreland, who already had three hits, two of them off the wall in left field. “In my career, not too many times have they brought in a left-hander to pitch to me,” said Moreland. “And I had been swinging the bat good the whole game.”

Moreland hit a shallow fly to right field for the first out. But his momentary depression was gone before he left the field. Randy Milligan, the next hitter, had told Moreland “I’ll pick you up one of these times.”

After each of Moreland’s hits, Milligan had been retired, twice on well-hit balls to the outfield. As Moreland returned to the bench, he poked the first baseman and said, “This is your time.”

Milligan’s response was a three-run homer over the bullpen in right-center field. When he returned, Moreland was on the top step of the dugout and he wrapped Milligan with a bearhug. “That picked me up immensely,” said Moreland, who watched the Orioles win for the first time since he joined the club.

“He hypnotized me into hitting it,” quipped Milligan.

But this wasn’t a game to be won easily. Holton did a superb job of giving the Orioles a chance, and they still had to scratch out three runs in the eighth to negate Nick Esasky’s two-run homer with two outs in the ninth.

Cal Ripken, who had nine hits in the four-game series, drove in the first with a rifle-shot double to right-center, created the second with a good slide on Milligan’s short sacrifice fly to left, which set up what proved to be the winner when Craig Worthington got his third hit of the night.

For anyone who had never witnessed a Fenway Park game, this one had it all. It was wild and totally unpredictable. A team that was buried clawed away the loose dirt and escaped.

“That reminded me of the old Orioles,” said Robinson. “Fenway Park, 9-8.”

Then the manager said something he never would have admitted had the Orioles lost the game. “This could have been the game where you start looking for excuses,” said Robinson. “It could have been a back-breaker.”

It wasn’t, and the fact that the Orioles survived under the most difficult of circumstances was not lost on those in the clubhouse.

“I think this game is an indication of the attitude of this team,” said Ripken. “It’s hard to tell young players that you can’t do something. We were down 6-0 and we were still out there battling, trying to win a game.

“I don’t know what it means for the future, but what it says to me is that we put all the other games (of the trip) out of our minds and said, ‘We’re in first place by one game, and we’re playing the second-place team - let’s go.’ That’s a very good sign.”

On the opposite side of the clubhouse, Tettleton said that 2-and-12, “Doesn’t sound too good, but it’s nice to see a lot of smiling faces, and it’ll make the day off (today) a lot better.”

And the best thing about the trip? “The best thing,” said Larry Sheets, “is that we’re going home, and we have a two-game lead.”

When Robinson was asked if 2-and-12 suddenly sounds like a good trip, he didn’t hesitate. “What do you mean, sounds good?” he asked. “It is. Right now, it sounds like a great trip.

“When it started, we knew it could be a tough trip,” said Robinson. “But you can’t approach it like that - anymore than we can approach going home like everything will be OK.

“As it turned out, it was a tough trip. Looking back now, 4-and-10 would’ve been good. But you can’t look at it like that.

“You have to stay positive, and sometimes it’s not easy,” said Robinson.

When you’re down 6-0, have already lost 13 of 14, and are on the verge of dropping out of first place for the first time in 69 days, it’s almost impossible.

Somehow the Orioles managed to overcome those odds. And in the process, regardless of what happens the rest of the way, they showed that a young team, inexperienced in the ways of a pennant race, can survive.

“If there is a message,” said Robinson, “it is that this team is not going to give up. We won’t give it to them. They’ll have to take it from us.”

The Trip is over, and the first Friday of August means then the Orioles are home for 17 of the next 20 games.

It’s T.G.I.F. twice over.