First Place Nice While It Lasted : Baseball: Orioles drop Angels into second as Manto’s homers key 10-4 victory.

The Angels were the first of many organizations to cut Jeff Manto loose, trading him to the Cleveland Indians in 1990, but it wasn’t as if the third baseman was bitter toward the team that made him a 14th-round pick in 1985.

“They did me a favor,” Manto said. “Mike Port [then-Angel general manager] said they were going with Jack Howell at third, and they were classy enough to give me a chance to develop somewhere else.”

And this is the thanks the Angels get?

Manto, who has played for six different organizations and spent 10 years in the minor leagues, blasted two home runs Friday night to lead the Baltimore Orioles past the Angels, 10-4, before an announced crowd of 40,782 in Camden Yards.

The loss dropped the Angels into second place in the American League West after they held the top spot for 22 consecutive days, their longest stretch there since the team remained in first for the final 82 days of the 1986 season.

Manto, who reached the triple-A level with the Angels in 1989, also hit two home runs in Thursday’s victory over the Seattle Mariners, giving him as many homers in two days as he had in his 232 major league at-bats entering 1995.

And now Manto’s name will be on the mantle with such greats as San Francisco slugger Barry Bonds, the last player to hit four homers in two days (July 15-16, 1994) and first baseman Eddie Murray, the last Oriole to hit four homers in two days (May 8-9, 1987).

“It’s a freak show,” Manto, 30, said. “That must be a misprint.”

This is no misprint: Manto, who won the third-base job from Leo Gomez about three weeks ago and bats seventh in the lineup, has more home runs (eight) than Cal Ripken Jr. (five), Harold Baines (six) and Chris Hoiles (six), the Orioles’ Nos. 4, 5 and 6 hitters.

“Perseverance kept me going,” said Manto, the triple-A International League’s most valuable player in 1994. “I’m no different than 200 guys in triple-A who are suffering every day. It’s just one of those things where you get an opportunity and you take advantage of it.”

And then there’s Angel pitcher Russ Springer, who had a similar opportunity Friday night but failed to capitalize.

Springer, called up from triple-A Vancouver this week to replace the injured Scott Sanderson in the rotation, took the mound with a four-run lead, courtesy of two-run homers by Tim Salmon and Jim Edmonds off Oriole rookie Scott Klingenbeck in the first.

But just as the Angel offense hit the wall, the Orioles started going over it. Manto’s two-run shot to right off Springer in the second cut the deficit to 4-2. Hoiles’ two-run homer to left, which barely cleared Tony Phillips’ glove in the fourth, made it 4-4.

Rafael Palmeiro’s bullet into the right-field bleachers gave Baltimore a 5-4 lead in the fifth, and Manto led off the sixth with a liner into the left-field bleachers that was hit so hard Phillips didn’t even bother moving back on the ball.

Palmeiro roughed up Angel reliever Mike James in the sixth with a two-run homer that caromed off the top of one of the brick columns that separates the stadium from the pavilion between right field and the B&O; Warehouse in Camden Yards. That made it 9-4.

The four homers Springer gave up were the most by any Angel starter this season, and the five homers the Angels yielded were a season high.

“I felt pretty decent tonight, to tell you the truth,” Springer said. “It just seems every pitch I missed with was hit pretty hard. I don’t know how many times I had two strikes on a guy and didn’t put him away. Maybe I need an out pitch.”

What Springer has is an out-of-the-park pitch. The right-hander who has a tendency to leave pitches up in the strike zone gave up three homers in nine previous Angel innings before being sent to Vancouver May 15, and now he has allowed seven homers in 14 innings.

Angel starters have been battered for 33 earned runs in 42 1/3 innings on this road trip for a 7.02 ERA.