MLB
Scores/Schedules Standings
Statistics
Transactions
Injuries
Players
Message board
Weekly lineup

  Saturday, Mar. 11 1:05pm ET
Detroit 9, Baltimore 7
 
  RECAP | BOX SCORE

LAKELAND, Fla. (AP) _ OK, so he hasn't signed that $140 million contract. That doesn't mean Juan Gonzalez isn't relaxed and happy.

Gonzalez hit two long home runs, giving him three in 14 spring at-bats, as the Detroit Tigers beat the Baltimore Orioles 9-7 Saturday.

Gonzalez, obtained in a nine-player trade with the Texas Rangers last November, hit a two-run homer to dead center, about 430 feet from the plate, in the third off Sidney Ponson. Ponson, who tied a Baltimore record with 35 homers last season, has given up two in eight innings this spring.

Gonzalez led off the fifth with a shot that went even farther. This one, off Radhames Dykhoff, cleared a cluster of palms behind the left-center power alley.

``Everybody on the bench just said, `Wow,' '' Tigers manager Phil Garner said.

Garner said the Gonzalez homers make a sound he had only heard once before.

``Bill Madlock and I were talking,'' Garner said. ``We both agreed that's the sound (Willie) Stargell's bat used to make when he'd hit a ball.''

Robert Fick, whose eighth-inning grand slam helped the Tigers win the last game in Tiger Stadium last season, hit a three-run homer for Detroit, his second off the spring.

Mike Bordick hit a solo homer, his first, leading off the Orioles' sixth.

Jim Poole, the third of eight Detroit pitchers, got the win. He got two outs in the eighth _ after Masao Kida had given up two runs on one hit and four walks.

Dykhoff was tagged for four runs, four hits and two walks in two-thirds of an inning and was the loser.

 


ALSO SEE
Baseball Scoreboard

Baltimore Clubhouse

Detroit Clubhouse