The rage was manufactured, but Ken Griffey Jr. tried to make it look good when he confronted Baltimore Orioles third-base coach Sammy Perlozzo.

“You’re stealing Lou’s signs,” Griffey screamed at Perlozzo, who was Seattle’s third-base coach under manager Lou Piniella for three years.

Both men broke up, along with Piniella. Why?

“Most of Lou’s signs are yelled at the coach,” Perlozzo said. “He’ll scream, ‘Run ‘em,’ and everybody on the field will hear him.”

“Cuts down on confusion,” Piniella said. “If we try to trick somebody, we usually trick our own guys.”

“When I coached for Lou in Cincinnati, then in Seattle, he’d forget the signs and just yell out to me what he wanted, and the other team wouldn’t believe him,” Perlozzo said. “You can’t steal signs from somebody who’s not trying to hide them.”

Notes

Alex Rodriguez stole his sixth base in the first inning and now has a 6-for-6 record the season… . Joey Cora’s fifth-inning error was Seattle’s 31st of the year, most in the American League… . On his last at-bat, Edgar Martinez hit his fifth home run, extending his hitting streak to 16 games… . Lost in Sunday’s defeat were 2-1/3 scoreless innings pitched by former CC Spokane right-hander Bob Wells, who had been struggling. “We had a conversation the other day,” Piniella said, “and he didn’t get to say much.”