Orioles Cool Off Surging Athletics

The Oakland Athletics may be in a wild-card race, but Tuesday night they were no match for a long-out-of-it Baltimore team with a healthy Mike Mussina and hot-hitting Cal Ripken.

Mussina won his first start in three weeks and Ripken hit his second home run in as many days as the Orioles ended Oakland’s winning streak at five games with a 13-6 victory.

Charles Johnson went four for four to help Baltimore extend its winning streak to a season-high eight games. The Orioles had 16 hits, half for extra bases.

The loss, combined with Boston’s victory at Cleveland, left Oakland three games behind the Red Sox in the AL wild-card race.

“We just got beat today. We won’t lose any sleep over it,” Oakland Manager Art Howe said. “We scored enough runs to win on a normal night, but it was not a normal night.”

Ripken’s three-run homer, his 18th of the season, highlighted a seven-run fifth inning that staked the Orioles to an 11-3 lead. Ripken, who also singled, has 11 hits in his last six games and needs 16 over the next 17 games to get his 3,000th career hit this season.

“It’s going to happen sooner or later, whether it’s this year or next,” Mussina said. “But we all hope it happens this year. It would be nice for him not to be sitting on 2,997 all winter.”

Mussina (16-7) gave up three runs and four hits in five innings. It was his first appearance since being struck in the right shoulder by a line drive off the bat of Chicago’s Brook Fordyce on Aug. 22.

Mussina struck out six, including Rich Becker three times, before being pulled with Baltimore ahead by eight runs.