Red Sox Batters Gain With Pain

The Boston Red Sox found a wild way to win another game in their last at-bat.

They capitalized on three hit batsmen, two errors and one wild pitch to score three runs in the bottom of the ninth inning and beat the Kansas City Royals, 5-4, Wednesday night at Fenway Park.

“You play 162 games, there’s going to be some weird stuff happening,” Boston’s Todd Walker said.

The Red Sox matched the team record set in 1998 for victories in April, finishing 18-8. Six of the victories came in their last at-bat.

The Royals had taken a 4-2 lead in the ninth on Ken Harvey’s two-run single.

The Red Sox had left the bases loaded in the sixth, seventh and eighth innings before scoring the winning run on first baseman Mike Sweeney’s error on Jason Varitek’s one-out grounder.

It was the 17th time since 1900 that a team hit three batters in the same inning and only the second time in the ninth.

New York 8, Seattle 5 -- Raul Mondesi hit a grand slam that went off Randy Winn’s glove and Andy Pettitte (4-1) gave up one unearned run in seven innings to lead the Yankees at New York.

Mariano Rivera, sidelined since spring training because of an injured groin, pitched the ninth in his first appearance. He gave up Mike Cameron’s run-scoring double before finishing Manager Joe Torre’s 1,600th victory.

Oakland 4, Chicago 1 -- Mark Mulder (4-1) pitched a four-hitter at Chicago and right fielder Magglio Ordonez lost Eric Byrnes’ fifth-inning fly ball in the fog for a go-ahead triple.

The game was delayed twice by fog for a total of 45 minutes. Not counting the delays, the game took 1 hour 54 minutes.

Texas 11, Toronto 3 -- Juan Gonzalez homered and drove in three runs at Toronto, and the Rangers beat the Blue Jays for the 10th consecutive time.

In his last eight games, Gonzalez has four home runs and 17 runs batted in.

Minnesota 8, Tampa Bay 5 -- Brad Radke (2-3) of the Twins gave up four runs in 5 2/3 innings in a game at Minneapolis that featured five ejections and four hit batters.

Rocco Baldelli hit his first major league homer and drove in all the runs for Tampa Bay.

Baltimore at Detroit -- The game was rained out and rescheduled as part of a doubleheader today.