Tigers Snap Boston Streak With a 5-4 Victory

With two out in the seventh inning and Detroit nursing a 4-3 lead, Darnell Coles of the Tigers kept fouling off pitches from Boston’s Al Nipper.

“Hit it straight,” one spectator shouted after Coles fouled off the 11th pitch, the fifth on a 3-2 count.

Coles got the message. He drilled the next pitch into the center field bleachers for his first homer of the season, the decisive run as the Tigers defeated Boston 5-4 and snapped the Red Sox four-game winning streak.

“That was quite a battle,” said Detroit’s Dave Collins, who had three hits and keyed a pair of two-run innings with a double and a single. “Darnell kept battling and came out on top. He finally got a pitch he could drive.”

“I kept trying to hit the ball up the middle and Nipper finally got the ball up a little,” said Coles, who set up two earlier runs with a hit and a sacrifice.

Coles’ two-out homer, the third of his career and the second in two years in Boston, made a loser of Nipper, 1-2.

“We had plenty of chances and kept coming up empty” Manager John McNamara said after the Red Sox left 12 runners on base, including nine in the first five innings.

Jim Rice led off the Boston seventh with his third homer, off the back wall in the bleachers in straight away center. The homer knocked out starter Walt Terrell, 2-1, but Randy O’Neal and Willie Hernandez protected the one-run lead with Hernandez picking up his fourth save.

Detroit jumped to a 4-0 lead. Collins led off the Boston Marathon Day game with a double to left, took third on a sacrifice by Coles and scored on a single by Lou Whitaker. After Kirk Gibson reached on an error by first baseman Bill Buckner, Lance Parrish singled in Whitaker from second.

Detroit added two runs in the fifth on a wind-blown triple off the left field wall by Alan Trammell, a run-scoring bloop single by Collins, a bloop hit by Coles and a sacrifice fly by Whitaker.

The Red Sox scored twice in the fifth. With one out Buckner singled and took third on a double off the center field wall by Rice. Don Baylor walked and one out later, Rich Gedman grounded a two-run single to left.

Wade Boggs hit his second homer into the left field screen with two out in the sixth.