Rodriguez Produces Texas’ Grand Victory

The Texas Rangers are way behind in the American League West. Still, Alex Rodriguez keeps playing as if he’s in a pennant race.

Rodriguez hit a grand slam to right-center field in the 10th inning, his second homer of the game on his 27th birthday, and the Rangers rallied for a 10-6 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Saturday night at Arlington, Texas.

Rodriguez homered in the first inning and leads the majors with 34. Texas rallied from a four-run deficit.

“It’s my first walk-off grand slam and it feels great,” Rodriguez said. “What really feels great, it was a total team effort. A couple of weeks ago we would have folded up the tents.”

Gabe Kapler led off the 10th with an infield single against Billy Koch (6-2) and went to second on Michael Young’s bunt. Kapler moved to third on Frank Catalanotto’s infield single and Koch hit Herbert Perry with a pitch to load the bases.

Rodriguez said he was looking to hit a sacrifice fly, but won it in spectacular fashion with his ninth career grand slam. He has five multihomer games this season and 24 in his career.

“I wasn’t trying to do too much, just get it in the air,” he said.

Carl Everett homered for Texas, his third in four at-bats, including two in the seventh inning of Texas’ 12-4 victory over Oakland on Friday night.

Jermaine Dye hit a three-run homer for the A’s, who lost their fourth in a row to match a season high and fall four games behind first-place Seattle in the AL West.

Tampa Bay 7, New York 4--Jared Sandberg hit a two-run homer at St. Petersburg, Fla., and the Devil Rays beat the Yankees for only the second time in 11 tries this season.

Travis Harper (4-6) gave up four runs and six hits in 6 2/3 innings. Toby Hall and Carl Crawford each had run-scoring triples.

Yankee starter Jeff Weaver (7-9) struggled for the fourth consecutive outing since being acquired from Detroit in a three-team trade July 5. He gave up six runs and nine hits in seven innings.

New York’s AL East lead over Boston dropped to four games.

Minnesota 5, Toronto 4--Corey Koskie’s one-out double in the bottom of the 10th inning lifted the Twins to their ninth victory in 10 games.

Pinch-hitter Bobby Kielty started the rally with a single against Kelvim Escobar (5-5) and moved to second on a bunt by Jacque Jones. After an intentional walk to Cristian Guzman, Koskie singled to right-center field to score Kielty.

Detroit 5, Cleveland 1--Steve Sparks won for only the second time since May 29 and Damion Easley hit a three-run homer at Cleveland to help the Tigers win their fifth in a row.

Sparks (5-10) gave up one run and seven hits in eight innings, improving to 5-0 in seven starts the last two seasons against Cleveland. It was his longest outing in 13 starts.

Easley hit a three-run homer in the third inning against C.C. Sabathia (6-9) and Hiram Bocachica hit a solo homer--his first in the AL--in the fifth for the Tigers.

Sabathia gave up four runs and nine hits in five-plus innings and fell to 1-5 in his last nine starts. The Indians have lost nine of 11.

Chicago 9, Kansas City 1--Magglio Ordonez homered twice and Aaron Rowand hit a two-run homer at Chicago.

Tony Graffanino also homered for the White Sox, who have outscored the Royals, 19-3, in the first two games of the series.

Gary Glover (4-5) gave up one run and five hits in seven innings to win for the first time since June 27.