BALTIMORE 5, MINNESOTA 1 IN BALTIMORE

Date:  Saturday, August 9.

Batting star:  Rich Reese was 2-for-4 with a double.

Pitching star:  Dick Woodson pitched two shutout innings, givint up two hits.

Opposition stars:  Elrod Hendricks was 3-for-4 with two RBIs.  Paul Blair was 2-for-4 with a home run, his twenty-fourth.  Jim Palmer pitched six innings, giving up one run on four hits and five walks and striking out four.  Pete Richert struck out four in three shutout innings, giving up one hit.  Brooks Robinson was 2-for-4.  Dave Johnson was 2-for-4.

The game:  With two out in the first, Tony Oliva doubled, Harmon Killebrew walked, and Reese delivered an RBI single to give the Twins a 1-0 lead.  Dean Chance came out and struck out the side in the bottom of the first.  At that point, things were looking good for the Twins.

That was the last time it looked good for them.  With one out in the second, consecutive singles by Brooks Robinson, Johnson, and Hendricks tied the score at one.  With one out in the third, Blair homered to make it 2-1.  With two out, Boog Powell doubled and Brooks Robinson singled him home to give the Orioles a 3-1 lead.

There were no more threats until the fifth, and then they started coming every half-inning.  Baltimore opened the fifth with singles by Don Buford and Blair, but a double play took them out of the inning.  Singles by Graig Nettles and Leo Cardenas put men on first and second with two out in the sixth, but the Twins did not score.  The Orioles got two-out singles from Hendricks and Mark Belanger in the bottom of the sixth, but did not score.  The tally remained 3-1.

Baltimore scored again in the seventh when Buford walked, went to third on a stolen base-plus-error, and scored on Frank Robinson's ground out.  Reese hit a one-out double in the eighth but did not score.  The Orioles added one more run in the bottom of the eighth when Johnson doubled and Hendricks single him home, bringing the score to 5-1.

WP:  Palmer (10-2).  LP:  Chance (3-2).  S:  Richert (10).

Notes:  Ted Uhlaender was again in center field, with Cesar Tovar at second base and Nettles in left field.

Reese raised his average to .335.  Oliva was 1-for-4 and was batting .332.

Chance struck out four in three innings, but allowed three runs on six hits and no walks.  Bob Allison pinch-hit for him in the fourth with a man on first and one out.  He had given up all three runs and six hits in the prior two innings, including a home run and a double in the third, so he was somewhat wobbly.  Still, it's a pretty quick hook by Billy Martin standards.  I'm not saying that it was a bad move, just a somewhat questionable one.  Chance's ERA was 2.93.

Record:  The Twins were 68-45, in first place in the American League West, 1.5 games ahead of Oakland.  The Twins had lost three in a row and four out of five.