Can Jiménez get the Orioles on a roll?

Heavy rain fell in Baltimore again yesterday, and while it didn't interrupt the start of the series opener against the Athletics, it washed away batting practice and created another mess for the grounds crew to clean up.

The Orioles have endured 16 delays this season at Camden Yards. Spikes have been replaced by galoshes.

If the Orioles don't bring back Storm Davis to throw out a ceremonial first pitch, they're missing out on a great opportunity.

Maybe Tim Raines Sr. and Jr. should be invited, as well.

Manager Buck Showalter said a veterinarian called his house yesterday and suggested that his miniature donkeys be put in the barn to prevent them from looking up at the sky during the solar eclipse. It's hard to force a donkey, no matter the size, to wear the special glasses.

A couple of players stepped onto the field in the afternoon and glanced at the overcast sky in anticipation of the eclipse. We debated whether burned retinas were a 10-day or 60-day DL situation.

An entire team going blind, even temporarily, likely would remove it from the wild card chase.

Can the Orioles stay in it, even with their sight intact?

They're three games below .500 again, territory so familiar, it should host their high school reunions. They're 3 1/2 behind for the second wild card.

The good version of Ubaldo Jiménez is desperately needed tonight in the second game of the current series against the Athletics. And no, it isn't as rare as an eclipse.

Jiménez's ERA dropped from 7.19 on July 21 to 6.25 on Aug. 11 after a four-start stretch where he allowed seven runs in 24 innings, with eight walks and 32 strikeouts. But in his last outing in Seattle, he gave up six runs and eight hits in 4 1/3 innings in a 7-6 loss.

The positive period included a start in Oakland where he lasted only 5 1/3 innings and threw 99 pitches, but allowed three runs, walked one and struck out 11. It's going in the good column.

Matt Olson hit a two-run homer in the fourth inning, but the Orioles retook the lead and carried it into the eighth inning before Brad Brach surrendered two runs (one earned) in a tough 5-4 loss.

Jiménez is 4-1 with a 4.70 ERA in eight career starts against the Athletics. The current group is batting .183 (11-for-60) against him.

Jed Lowrie is 1-for-15. Matt Joyce and Rajai Davis are 2-for-10.

Right-hander Paul Blackburn opposed Jiménez and allowed four runs and 10 hits in 5 2/3 innings. Adam Jones hit a solo home run in the second.

Right-handers are hitting .308 against Blackburn and left-handers are hitting .220.

The weekend celebration of the 25th anniversary of Camden Yards is done, but I'm not letting go without one more blog entry.

I wrote about former manager Johnny Oates choosing Rick Sutcliffe to start Opening Day, a decision applauded by pretty much everyone, including two pitchers who were the most directly impacted by it. And approval came before Sutcliffe shut out the Indians.

"It was my first full year," said Mike Mussina. "You set this stuff up in spring training and when you get to the second part of spring training, you start lining up how you're going to start the thing out so the starters can get on a five-day rotation and they can start doing their routines and all that. We could see how it was going to play out.

"I'm like, 'Yeah, I'll pitch whenever you ask me to pitch. Just give me a chance' And then Sut goes out there and takes the pressure off everybody by throwing that well. Then, whatever we were doing, OK, we've got a guy who's going to lead us. He's not only going to be a veteran presence and be able to talk to him, he's going to be able to perform, too. So, it took a lot of pressure off all of us and it allowed me to have a really good season.

"It allowed a lot of guys to go out there who weren't expected to be the leader. They're not asking 25 year old guys to be the veteran on the pitching staff. We've got the guy to do that and he's going to go perform for us, and that allowed us to go do some stuff and learn from them and help somebody else down the road."

It's easy to forget that Ben McDonald pitched the third game and spun a two-hit shutout.

"Sut was a blessing for me," McDonald said. "He really was, because it was a bunch of young guys in '89, '90 and '91, so I didn't have a veteran guy to go lean on. Moose was a lot smarter than I was. Went to Stanford, I went to LSU. He graduated and I didn't, so he picked things up a lot faster than I did.

"Moose never needed a whole lot of help. He need a little bit every now and then, but he figured it out pretty quick. It was obvious. It took me a little bit longer to figure it out. And you never really figure it all out. You just kind of start to get a game plan after a while. But Sut really helped me piecemeal a game plan together over time and he was a blessing. He really was.

"For the first time I had a guy that was 6 foot 7 that fought mechanics like I did from time to time. Because us big, long, tall guys, sometimes it's a little easier for us to get out of whack and a little bit harder to get it back and get synced up again. So I could go visit with him about mechanics. It was nice to have him. And he took the pressure off, really."

The tonnage could have broken McDonald.

"In my career there was a lot of pressure, as you know, being the first pick," he said. "And in '91 Frank Robinson comes out to you guys in the media in spring training and says, 'McDonald's got to win 20 for us to have a chance.' And that fell back on me.

"When Frank says something like that, I started thinking I had to live up to that and it really snowballed on me. And it was Sut who was the one who came to me and said, 'Look, you work as hard as anybody. We're going to keep working and keep grinding. Forget what everybody is saying. The media, what Frank's saying or whoever. Let's just go play. Every time you step on the bump you learn a little bit more. Your learning process will speed up with that, with me helping you out and (Cal Ripken) Junior calling pitches out at shortstop from time to time,' which happened a little bit.

"It helped and sped me up a little bit, which is what I needed. He was a blessing for me for a lot of different reasons."