baltimore orioles

How L.A. Rams are preparing for their London game against Jaguars

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the home of the Baltimore Orioles, is located a short walk from M&T Bank Stadium, where the Rams began an extended road trip on Sunday with a 17-3 victory over the Baltimore Ravens.

For much of this week, the baseball stadium will serve as the Rams’ home away from home as they prepare for Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley Stadium in London.

This is not the first time that the Rams have played an away game and then remained in the city before traveling abroad.

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Gary Klein breaks down what went right for the Rams in their 17-3 win over the Baltimore Ravens as they prepare to play the Jaguars in London on Sunday.

In 2017, coach Sean McVay’s first season, the Rams defeated the Jaguars in Jacksonville, Fla., and then stayed in town before traveling to defeat the Arizona Cardinals at Twickenham Stadium in London.

Two years later, the Rams beat the Falcons in Atlanta, and then remained there for a few days before traveling to London and defeating the Cincinnati Bengals at Wembley Stadium.

Several players said they would rely on the Rams’ training staff to help them modify weekly routines that include massage, acupuncture and other bodywork sessions with California providers outside of the organization.

Rams safety Quentin Lake noted that last season, the Rams stayed in Arizona for a few days before they played the Minnesota Vikings in an NFC wild-card game that was moved from SoFi Stadium because of wildfires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

“You’re in an unfamiliar environment and … it’s just the team and staff,” Lake said Sunday, adding, “Nothing truly is going to change in terms of our routine. … Honestly I love it because it’s fun.

“It’s fun for us to be in a different environment and really just lock in on football and focus on the task at hand.”

Last week, McVay and several players said that while adjustments were necessary for a long trip, none were too onerous.

A look at the field at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore.

The Rams are practicing this week at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in Baltimore before heading to London.

(Terrance Williams / Associated Press)

During the Rams’ first two trips abroad, McVay was neither married nor a father. This time, McVay said that his wife, Veronika, who has roots in the region, and son, Jordan, would make the trip to Baltimore.

“I’ll keep it as normal as possible,” McVay said. “What I like about these things is you get a chance to be around the guys a little bit more because of the nature of what this trip entails. … I try to keep a normal rhythm and routine.

“You just might be in a different location, but we have the film, we have the field and most importantly, we have the players. We’ll be in good shape.”

For quarterback Matthew Stafford “the biggest thing is not being in your own house, not having your family around, all that kind of stuff,” he said.

“I won’t be sleeping in my own bed and I won’t be doing some of the things that I’m accustomed to doing,” he said. “I just change location, really. What I would do maybe at home I’ll do wherever our setup is when we stay there.”

Receiver Davante Adams, a 12th-year pro in his first season with the Rams, said that he once was part of an extended trip that included a game in New Orleans and then a stay in Sarasota, Fla., before playing in Jacksonville. But this will be the first time Adams will be on an extended trip that includes a game in London.

It will be different, Adams said, because he has “a lot of different checkpoints and things throughout the week that I do locally. It’s going to be different for me for sure.”

Especially being away from family.

“The main thing for me is just being away from my kids, honestly more than anything,” he said. “That’s a big part of my healing process and mentally throughout the week just resetting, going home, spending time with them and my wife. Not having that element. … I mean, we’ll get through it.”

This will be the first extended trip that will end in London for defensive lineman Kobie Turner and other young players. Turner said he and his wife grew up about an hour outside Baltimore, so they were looking forward to spending time this week with his wife’s family.

“It will be interesting to see how it all plays out,” he said.

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Why 1995 Angels appreciated their place in history with Cal Ripken Jr.

Rex Hudler pestered plate umpire Larry Barnett for a game-used baseball, one with the orange laces and number “8” stamp to commemorate Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive games record in Camden Yards on Sept. 6, 1995, to no avail.

“He said, ‘No way, you’re gonna have to catch a third out or get a foul ball,’ ” said Hudler, the Kansas City Royals broadcaster who played second base for the Angels the night Ripken broke Gehrig’s record. “ ‘They’re all numbered and counted, and you can’t have one.’ ”

Hudler thought he had one when Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro sent a flare into shallow right-center field with two outs in the bottom of the third inning, but Angels right fielder Tim Salmon called him off and made the catch.

“We’re running into the dugout, and I’m yelling at him, ‘What are you doing? That was my ball!’ ” Hudler said. “And King Fish had this big grin on his face, he kept running and said, ‘Haha Hud, you’ll get one.’ ”

When the game became official after the top of the fifth, and Ripken passed the Iron Man by playing in his 2,131st consecutive game, Hudler took the field and watched as Ripken took an iconic victory lap around the stadium, high-fiving fans, hugging teammates and delaying the game for 22 minutes, 15 seconds.

Ripken shook hands with every player in the Angels dugout — ”And when does that happen?” he said on a Hall-of-Fame podcast — and shared a warm embrace with Angels hitting coach and Hall-of-Famer Rod Carew.

Rex Hudler of the California Angels tags out Brady Anderson of the Baltimore Orioles.

Rex Hudler, above during a game against the Orioles in 1996, played three seasons for the Angels.

(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)

“I told him, ‘You’ve been great for all these years and very consistent in what you’ve done, and one day I’ll see you in the Hall of Fame,’ ” Carew said. “What a record that was, to be healthy for that long.”

Hudler was standing at his second-base spot when Ripken started his lap, but by the time Ripken returned to his dugout and was greeted by his family, Hudler was standing on the pitcher’s mound.

“I had been in this little dream for however long it took him to go around the stadium, wandering, watching him, following him, just enamored by what he was doing, and the next thing I know, I’m on the mound,” Hudler said. “I quietly turned and walked back to my position.”

When the game finally resumed, the Orioles loaded the bases with two outs, and up stepped Ripken, who hit a two-run homer off Angels pitcher Shawn Boskie in the fourth inning.

“Palmeiro was on second base and he said, ‘Hud, it’s only fitting, look who’s coming up, the baseball gods are here,’ ” Hudler said.

Only this time, the gods smiled on Hudler, who was actually drafted ahead of Ripken in 1978 — Hudler was a first-round pick of the New York Yankees and Ripken a second-round pick of the Orioles — but spent his entire 13-year big-league career as a utility man, while Ripken became a Hall-of-Famer.

“I went back to my position and said, ‘God, have him hit it to me, please,’ and Cal flared the first pitch over my head toward right-center,” Hudler said. “It was kind of a loopy liner, and I remember running, looking up at the ball, and it was in slow motion. I had never fielded a ball in my 21-year career that was in slow motion.

“As I’m running, I’m thinking, ‘That’s a six-carat diamond,’ it looked like a jewel, and I told myself, ‘Hud, you’re gonna break your neck for this. You can’t let this ball drop.’ My adrenaline and speed carried me under it, and when I caught it on the run, I shook my arm three times in disbelief. God answered my prayer on the field! It was unbelievable.”

Hudler sprinted off the field, ignoring teammates wanting to high-five him in the dugout for saving two runs, and into the visiting clubhouse, where he stashed the ball in his locker for safekeeping.

President Bill Clinton is handed an autographed ball by Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr.

President Bill Clinton is handed an autographed ball by Baltimore Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr., left, as they meet at the Orioles’ clubhouse at Camden Yards on Sept. 6, 1995, prior to the game with the Angels. Looking on at right are the president’s daughter, Chelsea Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore.

(Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)

“I secured my precious gem,” Hudler said. “I have never caught a ball more valuable than that.”

Ripken, it turned out, was a gift that kept on giving. After the Angels’ 4-2 loss, Hudler was speaking to writers when an Orioles clubhouse attendant interrupted the scrum to present Hudler a shiny black Ripken bat signed with the message:

“To Hud, we go a long way back, you going ahead of me in the draft and all, but now, I feel like you feel when you strike out with the bases loaded: visibly shaken! All my best, Cal Ripken Jr., Sept. 6, 1995.”

Hudler was floored. He had asked Ripken for an autographed bat that May, when the Orioles were in Anaheim, and he was surprised one didn’t arrive when the Angels were in Baltimore in early June and the Orioles were in Anaheim again in late-August.

“I was speechless, I didn’t know what to say,” the always loquacious Hudler said. “Cal signed a bat for me that night. It was so classy. How could he think of me?”

The bat and the ball he caught to end the fifth inning — Hudler got the ball signed two years later — are featured in a special Cal Ripken shrine in the man-cave of Hudler’s Kansas City home.

And to think, this would not have been possible had a work stoppage not delayed the start of the 1995 season until late April and reduced the season to 144 games, placing the Angels, with no Orioles rainouts, in Baltimore when Ripken tied and broke Gehrig’s record.

Tim Salmon, batting during the last game of the regular season in 1995, was part of a team that last 29 of its last 43 games.

Tim Salmon, above batting during the last game of the regular season in 1995, was part of an Angels team that last 29 of its last 43 games and lost a one-game playoff for the AL West to the Seattle Mariners.

(J.D. Cuban / Getty Images)

“I looked at the schedule in April, and a light went off in my brain that these would be historical games of great magnitude,” Hudler said. “I told our old traveling secretary, Frank Sims, that I needed three extra rooms in Baltimore for Sept. 4-6, and he goes, ‘Kid, whattaya mean? That’s so far away.’

“I kind of played it off. I didn’t want to tell him why. Then a week before we went to Baltimore, Frank asked me if I wanted to sell any of those rooms because there were no rooms available. I said, ‘Heck no!’ Three of my best friends who I grew up with in Fresno came out with their wives. Great memories for them, too.”

As cool as it was to be part of Ripken’s historic night, it was bittersweet for the Angels, who were in the middle of an epic collapse in which they lost 29 of their last 43 games and blew an 11-game American League West lead, joining the 1978 Red Sox, 1969 Cubs, 1964 Phillies and 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers in baseball infamy.

Their 5-3 win over the Orioles in the Sept. 4 series opener snapped a nine-game losing streak. The Angels lost nine straight again from Sept. 13-23 to fall two games behind the Seattle Mariners.

They rallied to win their last five regular-season games to force a one-game playoff for the division, but they were crushed by the Mariners and then-ace Randy Johnson 9-1 in that game.

“That was a painful swoon, and it cost us the division, but to be part of that Ripken celebration when your team was struggling so badly took the pain away,” Hudler said. “I was honored to play in those games, because I’m sure one of those lineup cards is in Cooperstown, and that’s the only way I ever got into the Hall of Fame.”

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum logo.

This story originally appeared in “Memories and Dreams,” the official magazine of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. For more stories like this about legendary heroes of the game, subscribe to “Memories and Dreams” by joining the Museum’s membership program at www.baseballhall.org/join.

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Slumping Dodgers lose again to the lowly Pirates

It was a pivotal moment, in a pivotal game, in what’s become a pivotal week for the Dodgers in the National League West standings.

Which, rather predictably given their recently floundering form, meant they found a new way to mess it all up.

In the top of the second inning on Wednesday night at PNC Park, the Dodgers appeared to be in optimal position.

Earlier in the day, the second-place San Diego Padres had been swept by the woebegone Baltimore Orioles, opening the door for the Dodgers to extend their 2½-game lead in the division. And despite trailing by a run in their own showdown against a last-place team, the Dodgers had the Pittsburgh Pirates on the ropes, loading the bases with no outs for a chance to take the lead.

The task, at that point, was simple.

Get the ball in play. Manufacture some early scoring. And, at the very least, set a positive tone for a night in which the NL West lead could grow.

“That’s a situation where you get shorter with your swing, use the big part of the field and you’ve got to drive in a run,” manager Dave Roberts said.

That approach, however, never materialized.

Over the rest of an inexplicable 3-0 loss to the Pirates, what happened next would instead loom large.

First, second-year outfielder Andy Pages came up, worked another full count against Pittsburgh starter Braxton Ashcraft … then went down swinging chasing a slider that would’ve been ball four.

Next, rookie infielder Alex Freeland again ran the count full, got an elevated slider up in the zone to hit … but kept the bat on his shoulder as the umpire rung him up for a called third strike.

A Kiké Hernández flyout would ultimately end the inning. But it was the first two at-bats that had Roberts fuming afterward.

“You never want to say that one inning kind of win or loses a game,” Roberts said. “But the second inning, bases loaded, nobody out — I just felt that we had two bad at-bats and didn’t come away with anything.”

“That flipped the game,” Roberts later added. “It flipped the momentum.”

Indeed, on a night the Dodgers (78-61) failed to score any of their 11 baserunners or record a hit in seven at-bats with men in scoring position, no sequence was more frustrating than their second-inning fizzle.

It was the latest epitome of the team failing to produce in a clutch situation. Another example of their roster flunking some basic fundamentals.

“We’ve got to collectively get all of us on board understanding the magnitude of each at-bat, each situation,” Roberts bemoaned from his office postgame. “I sound repetitive [about how] it’s got to get better. But I do believe that having the right approach, the right mindset, the right urgency in a particular at-bat lends itself to better results.”

This has been a recurring theme for the Dodgers during the second half of the season; the kind of fine-margin miscues that have haunted them during a perplexing 22-29 stretch since July 4.

Sometimes, it’s their big-name superstars that falter. In other cases, it’s younger contributors like Pages and Freeland who fail to execute when required.

The only constant: Every time the Dodgers seem to be turning a corner, they find another way to trip themselves up.

“I do believe that the guys that we have in the room are capable of putting together consistent team at-bats of urgency from the first pitch on,” Roberts said. “But at the end of the day — and I’m sure our players are echoing the same message — we just got to get it done.”

This week’s series at PNC Park (the fourth straight the Dodgers have dropped here over the last four years) has exemplified the club’s maddening current rut in other ways.

One night, they explode at the plate for seven runs … only for their pitching staff to give up nine as it did in Tuesday’s loss.

The next, they piece together a decent pitching effort (even after Shohei Ohtani was scratched from his scheduled start because of an illness) … only for the offense to squander every single opportunity they had to take control of the contest (and lose catcher Will Smith along the way to a bruised hand he suffered on an errant foul ball, though postgame X-rays came back negative).

“We haven’t really put it together at all for a while now,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We need to start playing better.”

On Wednesday, the Pirates jumped in front in the first inning, when Bryan Reynolds homered in the 12th pitch of his at-bat off spot starter Emmet Sheehan. Andrew McCutchen doubled the lead in the second, adding to the sting of the Dodgers’ squandered bases-loaded opportunity with a line-drive home run in the game’s very next at-bat.

After that, “we just really couldn’t put anything else together,” Roberts said.

Or, more precisely, they failed to finish any other chances off.

The Dodgers loaded the bases again with two out in the third, before Alex Call hit a dribbler up the first-base line to retire the side.

The team had two runners aboard again in the fifth and seventh, but continued to come up empty each and every time.

“We had guys on, we just didn’t get the hit,” said Freeman, who rolled into a fifth-inning double-play to extinguish that threat. “Frustrating night.”

The only saving grace right now is that the Padres (who have lost four in a row while dealing with a string of deflating injuries) haven’t made up ground against them.

“I’m very much aware of that,” Roberts said. “But they’re feeling the same thing we are. We’ve got to control what we can control. And we’re certainly not.”

A different approach in Wednesday’s second inning might have changed all that. Instead, it served as another regrettable failure, turning a potentially pivotal chance to stretch the division lead into one of the season’s most dispiriting losses.

Smith update

Smith exited Wednesday’s game after the second inning, when a foul tip bounced off the dirt and hit his right throwing hand as it was hanging behind his right thigh.

Because Smith’s X-rays came back negative, Roberts said the club was hopeful he could avoid the injured list. However, given the swelling and soreness he was feeling postgame, the team was still planning to call up a third catcher on Thursday for more roster insurance.

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Connor Brogdon gives up grand slam and Angels are swept by Orioles

Gary Sánchez hit a seventh-inning grand slam, Ramón Urías and Jordan Westburg also homered, and the Baltimore Orioles completed a three-game sweep with a 11-2 victory Sunday over the Angels.

Cade Povich earned his first victory since April 24 as Baltimore secured its third sweep of the season, all in its last five series. The Orioles (30-40) are within 10 games of .500 for the first time since they were 15-25.

Nolan Schanuel homered for the Angels.

Baltimore took a 3-2 lead against left-hander Yusei Kikuchi (2-6) on Ramón Laureano’s RBI single in the fourth, and then chased Kikuchi in the sixth. Sánchez hit a two-out single and then came around when Kikuchi flung Cedric Mullins’ bunt single down the right-field line. Coby Mayo followed with an RBI double.

Sánchez broke the game open with his sixth career grand slam and first since Aug. 15, 2023. The catcher ripped Connor Brogdon’s two-out fastball to left-center for Baltimore’s third grand slam of the season and first since May 14.

Povich (2-5) came out of the bullpen for the first time in 29 career outings. He threw 3⅔ shutout innings after replacing opener Scott Blewett.

Schanuel hit a solo homer in the first for the Angels, and Urías responded with a two-run shot later in the inning. Westburg hit a two-run homer in the eighth.

Kikuchi allowed a season-high five runs — three earned — and struck out 10 in 5⅔ innings.

Key moment: Orioles reliever Seranthony Domínguez entered with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh and struck out Jo Adell and pinch hitter LaMonte Wade Jr. to preserve a 5-2 lead.

Key stat: Baltimore improved to 20-6 against the Angels since 2022, including 5-1 this season.

Up next: Angels RHP José Soriano (4-5, 3.86 ERA) starts the opener of a four-game series Monday at the New York Yankees. Baltimore has not announced its pitching plans for a four-game series at Tampa Bay starting Monday.

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Angels’ struggles at the plate return in shutout loss to Orioles

Charlie Morton struck out a season-high 10 batters in five innings, Ryan O’Hearn and Ramón Laureano hit home runs and the Baltimore Orioles beat the Angels 2-0 on Friday night in a game that was delayed by rain before the start and again in the fifth inning.

Morton (3-7) surrendered two straight singles to begin the fourth, but he struck out LaMonte Wade Jr. on three pitches before two groundballs got him out of the jam. Morton fanned Zach Neto leading off the fifth. He left after rain forced the second delay.

Angels starter Jack Kochanowicz (3-8) used three groundball outs to retire the side in order in the first, but O’Hearn hit his 10th home run on Kochanowicz’s first pitch in the second for a 1-0 lead. Laureano led off the fifth with his eighth homer for the final run. The second delay followed after a one-out single by Ramón Urías.

Yennier Cano, Gregory Soto and Bryan Baker each pitched a scoreless inning for Baltimore before Félix Bautista had the final two of 14 strikeouts by the Orioles in notching his 12th save in 13 chances.

Kochanowicz gave up two runs and four hits in 4 1/3 innings and the Angels used four relievers to finish.

The Orioles beat the Angels for the 20th time in the last 25 matchups. The Angels won two of three against Baltimore on May 9-11.

Key moment: Morton allowed the first two batters to reach in the first inning but came back to strike out Mike Trout and Jorge Soler looking and Logan O’Hoppe on a foul tip to set the game’s tone.

Key stat: The Orioles began the day with a staff ERA of 5.00 — second-worst in the AL followed by the Angels at 4.76.

Up next: Angels LHP Tyler Anderson (2-3, 3.99) starts Saturday against Orioles RHP Tomoyuki Sugano (5-4, 3.23).

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