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Orioles weather rain, beat Twins 4-1 in 6 innings

May 7, 2009 - 5:09 AM By DAVID GINSBURG AP Sports Writer

BALTIMORE(AP) -- The Baltimore Orioles were happy to get a win, even if it meant waiting through four rain delays totaling nearly four hours.

Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire was furious about being forced to endure a scenario that caused 87 minutes of playing time to stretch into the next day.

Nick Markakis and Luke Scott homered, and the Orioles beat the Twins 4-1 Wednesday night in a game called by rain in the sixth inning.

The start of the game was delayed 42 minutes by rain, then umpires stopped play for 40 minutes in the second inning. Play resumed for 21 minutes before the tarp was brought out again. After a delay of 1 hour, 27 minutes, the game continued with only a few hundred fans in the stands.

Thirty-eight minutes later, the final delay began at 11:22 p.m. EDT.

"The game should have never started in the first place. Never had a window all night long," Gardenhire said. "All you have to do is look at the radar and you see that it's supposed to rain all night long. Once we stopped the first time, we should have never went back out there. There was never more than a 15-minute window to do anything."

When the game was finally called at 12:19 on Thursday morning, the Orioles had their third win in 12 games.

"I wasn't sure we were going to get five innings in," Baltimore manager Dave Trembley said. "I'm glad we did."

Brian Bass (1-1) allowed one run in 2 2-3 innings. Half the eight outs he recorded were strikeouts.

Minnesota isn't scheduled to return to Baltimore after this two-game series, which added a measure of urgency to the decision of how long to wait before postponing the game.

Gardenhire would have preferred to play a doubleheader Thursday than to dodge the raindrops for an entire night.

"Once we got going we tried to play five innings, and major league baseball is nine innings," he said. "We didn't get a chance to do that because of the weather. Somebody made a mistake here. I don't know who's supposed to be accountable for this, but my team ends up paying the final price here because we lose a baseball game."

Baltimore went up 3-0 against Kevin Slowey (4-1) in the first inning. Adam Jones doubled with one out before Markakis hit a liner that struck the right-field foul pole. Aubrey Huff then doubled and scored on a two-out single by Scott.

"There's going to be days where weather is going to really dictate how things go that day," Slowey said. "It's one of those games that might happen once ore twice a year. It's unfortunate, but that's how it goes."

Orioles starter Mark Hendrickson retired nine of the 10 batters he faced, the exception a single by Mike Redmond with one out in the third. But the left-hander was pulled after the third rain delay, making it 12 straight games since a Baltimore starter has gotten a win.

"After the first delay I felt pretty good coming back out, but the second one was just too long," Hendrickson said. "So I had to turn it over to the bullpen, and we got a win here tonight. So that's good."

Like Henderson, Slowey was lifted after the third delay. He was replaced by Craig Breslow, whose first pitch in the fourth inning was hit into the center-field seats by Scott.

Minnesota loaded the bases with no outs in the fifth, but scored only one run. After Nick Punto hit a run-scoring grounder, he strayed too far off first base and got caught in a rundown. Carlos Gomez tried to score on the play, and was thrown out at the plate. Bass ended the threat by retiring Denard Span on a comebacker.

Notes: Twins third baseman Joe Crede was scratched because of a stomach ailment. ... Baltimore improved to 1-13 when scoring fewer than 5 runs.