Confusion spread quickly throughout Oriole Park at Camden Yards on Friday night.

No music played over the speakers heading into the sixth inning as ushers rushed around frantically. They were instructing fans to leave their seats and head to safety as a storm moved into the area, but the players continued to warm up as though nothing was happening.

Finally, as pitcher Dean Kremer was about to begin the sixth, the announcement came: With threats of lightning strikes around the stadium, fans needed to clear the seating bowls. Some remained until security came to escort them out.

Yet play went on, despite visible lightning strikes continuing for the rest of the game. The Orioles have control only over the stadium, not the game, so they decided to move fans for their safety. But the umpires and MLB had to make the call to go into a delay, and they decided to play on.

“When we pull the teams off the field when it’s not raining hard, we get second-guessed,” crew chief Bill Miller said to a pool reporter. “We work in conjunction with the grounds crew. We are a team. At no time did I feel like the field was dangerous.”

Miller said he received updates every half hour from the grounds crew and that he had it treat the mound and plate area with Turface.

“The storm was decidedly moving south. He thought the top of it was going to catch us,” Miller said. “They did clear the stands, unbeknownst to me. We are concerned about lightning, but the crew did not see any lightning in the area. We saw it from afar, but we didn’t think at any time anybody on the field was in danger.”

The Orioles felt differently about the stands. So for two innings the open seats at Camden Yards were empty, the 25,000 fans in attendance squished into either the concourse to watch on the small televisions scattered around the concession stands or, for the lucky ones, into the limited covered seats.

When a foul ball landed in left field, three fans sprinted through the vacant rows to snatch it, with security carefully monitoring. During the seventh-inning stretch, the soundtrack of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” by John Denver played throughout the stadium, but there was no one dancing on the dugout.

In the bottom of the seventh, as the Orioles’ Alex Jackson doubled and Jackson Holliday hit a single to bring him in to tie the game, only a faint cheer could be heard from the fans who still had a view of the game. It was reminiscent of the rebuilding years, when the stadium was bare by choice, or the COVID-19 pandemic, when restrictions were in place to prevent the spread of the disease.

“I trust the fact that the umpires have our health and safety in their best judgment, and I applaud the Orioles for kind of clearing out the lower bowl and kind of mitigating any risk whatsoever, making sure that the fans were in a safe spot,” Baltimore interim manager Tony Mansolino said.

By the next inning, the storm had cleared and fans were allowed to trickle back in, but it was evident that some decided they had had enough. That tie game quickly evaporated too, Ezequiel Tovar hitting a solo home run to put the Rockies back in front. If fans didn’t leave because of the lighting, they used this as an opportunity to head to the exits.

The Rockies went on to win 6-5.

“Yeah, that’s a bitter one right there,” Mansolino said. “It feels like here lately we’ve thrown up some good numbers early in games on that last road trip, and we just haven’t been able to hang on. Part of that is pitching, and part of that is not adding more runs as the game goes on. We have to add more runs. We had a couple spots we could have. We didn’t get it done, unfortunately, tonight.”

It was, for a few innings, looking like a solid day for the Orioles. Friday afternoon, Baltimore traded Gregory Soto to the New York Mets for two minor league pitchers, the team finally, if not by words then by actions, admitting it was time to sell and that this season was a washout.

Then, in the first two innings, the Orioles hit four solo home runs, with Coby Mayo, Jordan Westburg, Tyler O’Neill and Jackson all getting one. For Mayo, it was his first off a major league pitcher; his only other home run came against a position player.

It wouldn’t last. Against Kremer, the Rockies, the worst team in MLB, crept back in. By the top of the fifth, Colorado had scored five runs, erasing the Orioles’ hot start.

“All in all, didn’t do my job tonight,” Kremer said. “Guys gave me a lead, and I blew it.”

With Soto gone and closer Félix Bautista on the injured list, Corbin Martin took the ninth. He succeeded in a 1-2-3 inning, but the Orioles’ offense did not.

This article has been updated.