Yankees Let One Slip Away

WASHINGTON —  It’s hard to think of a more demoralizing scenario. The Washington Nationals, losers of five straight games, were down seven runs to the New York Yankees, whose fans had turned RFK Stadium into a home-away-from-home.

“We didn’t hang our heads,” Daryle Ward said. “The guys were still alive in the dugout. We starting putting a few hits together, and next thing you know it’s like the floodgates opened up for us.”

The Nationals rallied with four runs in the fifth, two in the seventh and three in the eighth -- with even Mariano Rivera helpless to stop the momentum. Ward lumbered around the bases with the go-ahead run on Jose Guillen’s first triple of the season, and Washington ended its skid Saturday with an 11-9 victory.

“For a team that’s been struggling lately, and not getting a lot of breaks, this is huge,” said Jon Rauch, one of three relievers who held the Yankees scoreless over the last three innings. “Now we just need to keep it up.”

The score was 9-2 after the Yankees’ seven-run fifth, which included home runs by Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada, along with Johnny Damon’s second grand slam of the year. The crowd of 45,085, the Nationals’ first sellout of the year and the largest in Washington since baseball returned to the nation’s capital last year, was rocking RFK with cheers for the visiting team.

The turning point followed immediately, when the Nationals answered with four.

“They put up seven,” said Ryan Zimmerman, one of five Nationals with at least two hits. “If we put up nothing, it’s going to be tough to come back and win that game. Even if we put up two, just responding to that seven is big.”

Yankees starter Shawn Chacon had the dubious distinction of failing to last even one inning when given a seven-run lead.

“We have a 9-2 lead, there’s no way I should walk the leadoff guy,” Chacon said. “And if they get four or five base hits in a row, then fine. But I was disappointed in that walk and definitely disappointed in not being given the opportunity to get out of it.”

In the seventh, Ward hit an upper-deck homer off T.J. Beam, who was making his major league debut after getting recalled from triple-A Columbus. Pinch-hitter Robert Fick’s two-out single off Scott Proctor scored Guillen and made it a one-run game.

But the game wasn’t decided until the eighth, when Rivera (4-4) entered with one out and Alfonso Soriano on first. Soriano stole second and third, coming home on a wayward throw to third by catcher Posada.

Ward, who had entered the game in the third inning for Nick Johnson (strained back), then walked. Guillen followed with a triple to right center, and Ward started running out of gas at third base but legged his way home well ahead of the throw.