June 5, 1995: Big Unit baffles Birdland bats, Buhner bashes Big Ben

Salary arbitration can drive a wedge between a player and team ownership. If the player is eligible for arbitration and the two sides are unable to agree on a salary for the coming season, each submits an amount to a panel of arbitrators and makes a case for its appropriateness. The panel then selects the salary proposal supported by the most persuasive argument.1

The process is a gamble because the arbitrator must select one figure or the other and can’t suggest a compromise. Also, because the team is making an on-the-record case for why the player deserves less money than he believes he’s worth, the process can cause conflict between the two.

Hard-throwing Baltimore Orioles starter Ben McDonald summed it up as: “Five hours of them telling me how bad I was, then patting me on the butt saying, ‘Go get ’em tonight.’”2

Normally arbitration hearings are conducted in the first three weeks of February, wrapping things up ahead of spring training. The 1994-95 players strike, which was motivated in part by owners attempting to eliminate arbitration and refusing to take part in the arbitration process,3 altered that schedule for the 1995 season. Arbitration-eligible players and their teams didn’t even exchange figures until the end of April, and hearings needed to be conducted in May and June, during the regular season.

“You might’ve guessed it would fall on a day I pitch,” a frustrated McDonald complained.4

His hearing was slated for the morning of June 5, the same day he was up in the Orioles rotation, facing the Seattle Mariners and their ace, Randy Johnson, in a showdown of third-place teams. The two had gone head-to-head 10 days earlier at Seattle’s Kingdome in a game the Mariners won, 8-3, though the team didn’t have much to celebrate. Ken Griffey Jr., already the best player in Mariners history in only his sixth season, broke his wrist making a highlight-reel-quality catch against the thinly padded concrete and plywood wall in right-center field and was expected to be out until September.

Baltimore’s game on June 4, a 14-6 loss to the Oakland A’s that broke a four-game winning streak, didn’t end until after 11 P.M. In the morning, McDonald had to be at a hotel near Oriole Park at Camden Yards for the hearing. He was aggravated, mostly because the whole situation could have been avoided.

“We’ve always worked for an agreement in the past,” McDonald said. Since his first contract, a three-year deal worth $900,000 inked after he was selected first overall in the June 1989 amateur draft, McDonald and the Orioles always managed to hammer out one-year contracts. “This time, it’s like we’re forced to go to arbitration because of the lack of negotiations on their part. … Whether I win or lose, I’m still going to be upset.”5

When the 1994 strike began, McDonald had been on pace for a 20-win season, finishing with a career-best 14-7 record and an earned-run average of 4.06.6 The team offered him $3.2 million for 1995, but he was asking for $4.5 million.7 The right-hander’s salary request represented one of the highest demands of all the arbitration cases and, at $1.3 million, the greatest discrepancy between a team’s offer and a player’s request.8

After five hours, the hearing concluded and McDonald headed to the ballpark to prepare for the game, trying not to think about what the Orioles lawyers had said about his abilities nor wonder how the arbitrator would eventually rule. “If I can pitch under [these] circumstances,” he declared. “I can handle anything.”9 McDonald took the mound before a crowd of 36,732 fans and got through the first inning, allowing one hit, a two-out double by Edgar Martínez.

The previous December, free agent Jay Buhner and the Orioles had agreed to a four-year contract worth up to $18 million, but just days before Christmas, the slugger chose to re-sign with Seattle. Now, in his first game in Baltimore since the deal was scuttled, he had a chance to give his team the lead but instead knocked a routine grounder to third base to end the first inning.

Against Johnson, Orioles manager Phil Regan gave all his left-handed bats a rest except one. Rookie Curtis Goodwin led off, playing in just his fourth major-league game. Regan pulled Goodwin aside for some advice about facing the 6-foot-10 southpaw whose fastball registered triple digits on the radar gun.10

“Hang in there,” Regan told him. “That’s all. Good luck.”11

Goodwin struck out swinging. Other than a two-out single by Cal Ripken Jr., Johnson got out of the inning unscathed. He struck out Jeffrey Hammonds in the second inning and Goodwin again in the third, while allowing a single and a walk in that span.

McDonald matched Johnson’s zeros on the scoreboard. He also allowed a single and a walk, but his defense erased both with double plays – a groundout to short in the second and a lineout to first baseman Jeff Manto, who stepped on the bag to double up Félix Fermín in the third.

In the fourth, Buhner lasered a line drive into the right-center field gap for a two-out double, giving his team a chance to take the lead. McDonald intentionally walked Tino Martinez, who’d homered in the previous game at the Kingdome, then struck out Darren Bragg to strand Buhner and keep things knotted up.

Chris Hoiles, whose three-run homer accounted for all of the Orioles’ runs against Johnson in Seattle, opened the bottom of the fourth with a single to left. After Hammonds struck out a second time, Manto hit a grounder to third baseman Mike Blowers that turned into a double play.

In the sixth, McDonald made one mistake. After Edgar Martínez singled to left, Buhner found himself, for a third time, in a position to put Seattle ahead. McDonald’s second pitch, a fastball, caught more of the plate than he wanted, which was enough for Buhner to barrel it about 20 rows deep into the stands down the left-field line.

“You figure you get two runs for Randy in any game, you’ve got a chance to win,” Buhner declared, and he was correct.12

After Manto’s double play, Johnson didn’t allow another baserunner, retiring 17 straight batters for a 2-0 win that pushed his season record to 6-0. Despite throwing 141 pitches, Johnson was still hitting 96 MPH with his fastball in the ninth. “He was just as strong in the end as he was in the beginning,” marveled Regan.13 “I don’t know if I’d compare him to Sandy] Koufax yet, but he’s getting close.”14

“Randy was at his best,” said Mariners manager Lou Piniella. “When you give Randy a lead in the late innings, he turns it up. He gets more competitive.”15

The Mariners star struck out the side in the fifth, Goodwin for a third time in the sixth, Hoiles in the seventh, and all three Orioles hitters in the ninth, including Goodwin again.

In his first three at-bats, Goodwin went down swinging at Johnson’s slider. Finally, in the ninth, he waited on the slider, only to watch a fastball blow past for strike three. “I don’t think he wants to face him again,” joked teammate Manny Alexander, who’d sat in the dugout after the game and listened while the rookie talked through his confusion and frustration.

Lost in Johnson’s dominant performance was that McDonald continued to duel with him to the end. After Buhner’s home run, only two more Mariners reached base, both on flukes. Tino Martínez got aboard on a two-base error by left fielder Kevin Bass, and Blowers struck out swinging at a wild pitch in the seventh and ran to first. McDonald retired his last nine hitters in order, but despite throwing his best game of the season, his record fell to 1-2.

“It was really unfair to him,” Johnson said when he learned about his opponent’s earlier hearing.16 “Ben McDonald is a quality pitcher and it was a tough night for him. … I’m sorry he had to go through that.”17

Johnson went 18-2 for the season, posted a 2.48 ERA, and led the majors with 294 strikeouts on his way to winning his first of five Cy Young Awards. He helped keep the Mariners afloat until Griffey returned in mid-August. The team closed an 11-game deficit with the California Angels to force an AL West tiebreaker game, which Seattle won, earning the franchise’s first playoff berth.

With free agency looming. McDonald asserted he wanted to remain in Baltimore. But in voicing his frustration over the arbitration, he admitted, “It could have some bearing on a choice like that.”18

McDonald won his arbitration, sparking rumors the Orioles’ front office might prefer to let him walk in free agency rather than deal with his agent, Scott Boras. “There’s no animosity directed to McDonald,” team owner Peter Angelos insisted, denying the rumor. “In my mind, Ben is an Oriole.”19

But Baltimore refused to offer McDonald a contract in the offseason, granting him free agency. In January 1996, he signed with the Milwaukee Brewers.20

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Mike Huber and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Photo credit: Jay Buhner, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author accessed Baseball-Reference.com, Stathead.com, and Retrosheet.org. ESPN’s highlights from this game can be viewed on YouTube.21

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BAL/BAL199506050.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1995/B06050BAL1995.htm

Notes

1 “Salary Arbitration,” MLB.com, https://www.mlb.com/glossary/transactions/salary-arbitration, accessed August 2025.

2 Ken Rosenthal, “McDonald Has Rough Morning, Tough Evening,” Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1995: 1C.

3 Future Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, then a US district judge, issued an injunction on behalf of the National Labor Relations Board that forced owners to participate in arbitration, bringing the players strike to an end after nearly eight months.

4 Buster Olney, “Coppinger Moves Up in Class,” Baltimore Sun, June 5, 1995: 6C.

5 Olney, “Coppinger Moves Up in Class.”

6 For context, McDonald had the 20th best ERA among AL pitchers with at least 10 starts. Increased offense in 1994 pushed the league-average ERA in the AL to 4.80, up nearly half a run from 1993’s 4.32 ERA and almost a full run above the five-season-combined ERA of 3.96 from 1988 to 1992.

7 Just a bit more than the $4,225,000 the Orioles had agreed to pay starting pitcher Kevin Brown when they’d signed him weeks earlier.

8 “Arbitration Figures,” Baltimore Sun, April 29, 1995: 10C. Only Chili Davis ($5.1M), Ken Hill ($5M), and Kevin Appier ($4,725,000) were asking for higher salaries than McDonald. John Wetteland and Hill were tied for the second highest gap, both separated from their teams’ offers by $1.25 million.

9 Rosenthal, “McDonald Has Rough Morning.”

10 This was the fourth and final head-to-head matchup between Johnson and the 6-foot-7 McDonald, the tallest starting matchup in major-league history at a combined 13 feet 5 inches.

11 Buster Olney, “Hits and Misses,” Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1995: 8C.

12 Larry LaRue, “Johnson Mows Down Orioles,” Tacoma News Tribune, June 6, 1995: C1.

13 LaRue, “Johnson Mows Down Orioles.”

14 Buster Olney, “Johnson KO’s O’s on 12 Strikeouts, Tops McDonald,” Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1995: 1C.

15 LaRue, “Johnson Mows Down Orioles.”

16 Rosenthal, “McDonald Has Rough Morning.”

17 LaRue, “Johnson Mows Down Orioles.”

18 Olney, “Coppinger Moves Up in Class.”

19 Buster Olney, “No McDonald Rift,” Baltimore Sun, August 4, 1995: 6C.

20 McDonald finished the 1995 season 3-6 with a 4.16 ERA, spending three months on the disabled list with arm troubles. This led to his accepting a heavily incentivized contract that guaranteed him $5.75 million over two years, with various performance bonuses and a third-year option that could increase its value to as much as $13.3 million.

21 “1995 MLB Highlights June 5,” YouTube video (SW561), 7:58, uploaded January 21, 2020, https://youtu.be/UdwVI7RJlDI?si=-EYNP5UGkzZouZoz&t=311, accessed September 1, 2025.