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