Hip-hop music thumping in the clubhouse. Players smiling instead of sulking over the post-game spread. The new manager nearly getting a celebratory cream towel in the face from his center fielder.

So that's what an Orioles win looks like.

It had been so long — after 10 demoralizing losses in a row and a manager kicked to the curb three days ago — that you had almost forgotten.

As usual, it was a struggle, a 4-3 win Sunday over the Boston Red Sox in 11 innings that took four hours, 20 minutes in the heat and humidity of a Baltimore June.

And Camden Yards was Fenway Park South again, with at least two-thirds of the announced 27,774 in attendance seemingly cheering for the Red Sox.

Didn't matter. Not to the losingest — is that even a word? — team in baseball.

No, when Nick Markakis' flare to center field off Red Sox reliever Hideki Okajima scored Cesar Izturis in the 11th and the Orioles poured out of their dugout to celebrate, it was as cathartic a moment as this team has had in weeks.

"Just in case you guys are wondering, I did not get any more gray [hair] today," a smiling Juan Samuel said when it was over.

Samuel, who's 1-2 as the interim manager since replacing Dave Trembley on Friday, didn't take his cap off during his post-game news conference. So we'll have to take his word about the gray hair.

But all you had to do was walk around the Orioles clubhouse and talk to some of his players to get an idea of what kind of stress this team has been under the past two months.

"If we had a clubhouse full of veterans, it would be different," Markakis said. "But this is a clubhouse full of young guys who are still trying to learn. And to be put in a situation like that, it's tough."

No, it's worse than tough — it's brutal.

No wonder some of the young players have seemed shell-shocked by the culture of losing that envelopes this team.

Andy MacPhail, the Orioles' president of baseball operations, says he still hasn't given up on this season, still holds out hope that the Orioles can turn things around and play respectably the next four months.

Which is exactly what Markakis and a few of the other veterans were saying after the Orioles played their longest game of the season.

"You can't just fold and give in," Markakis said. "We still have over half the season to play. …We're going to pull through this. We've got too [much] talent … not to play better than we're playing."

Said Adam Jones, who never did manage to catch Samuel with the shaving cream towel: "Losing is something I just can't handle. You hope today is the start of something good."

If that's the case, if the Orioles can pull out of the horrible nose-dive they were in for the first 56 games, there will have to be a lot more games like Sunday's, when they played a sound fundamental game for one of the few times this season.

"Guys did some things that we've been preaching and asked them to do since Day One: bunt, run balls out, keep the intensity for as long as the game [lasts]. And we saw all those things today," Samuel said.

And it's funny what happens when you play sound fundamental baseball: It makes the game look easy.

That's what happened in the bottom of the 11th inning, anyway.

Izturis leads off with a walk against Okajima. Julio Lugo lays a perfect bunt down the first base line to advance the runner.

Okajima walks Miguel Tejada intentionally to set up the double play. And Markakis comes through with the winning hit.

It's how you draw it up.

Well, at least it's how the good teams draw it up.

And maybe the Orioles will be doing more of that behind Samuel, the no-nonsense baseball lifer from San Pedro de Macoris in the Dominican Republic who has been given his first shot at managing at age 49.

I'll tell you this: It was fun watching Samuel soak in this first win.

A couple of hours before the game, he had acknowledged the pressure he was under, a proud Latin American trying to turn around a once-proud franchise that has suffered through 12 losing seasons in a row.

"It's a huge load for me, for my fellow Latin Americans and countrymen," Samuel said. "To have the opportunity to be another Latin manager is definitely something I hope to take advantage of."

We'll see how long he opportunity lasts. The odds are it won't be long. The Orioles are looking around for a manager — MacPhail has made no secret of that.

But Sunday was no time to speak about that.

Not for Juan Samuel. And not for the rest of the Orioles, who haven't had fun like that in weeks.

Listen to Kevin Cowherd on Tuesdays from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. with Jerry Coleman on Fox 1370 AM Sports.