Palmeiro Does His Share for Orioles

Rafael Palmeiro doesn’t want his charge toward 3,000 hits to get in the way of his primary goal, which is helping the Baltimore Orioles stay in contention in the American League East.

So he addressed both objectives Saturday with a prolific offensive display at Baltimore.

Palmeiro homered, drove in six runs and moved to within three hits of 3,000, and the Orioles beat the Boston Red Sox, 9-1.

Baltimore won for only the fourth time in 16 games to move within three games of the first-place Red Sox.

Palmeiro put the Orioles ahead for good with a three-run homer in the third inning. He also hit a first-inning sacrifice fly, a run-scoring single in the seventh and a sacrifice fly in the eighth.

His two-for-three performance brought him to the brink of joining Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Eddie Murray as the only players in major league history with 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

“I’m just trying to get it over with so we can focus on winning games,” Palmeiro said. “This is good. We picked up a game on the Red Sox, which is what we’re trying to do.”

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Cleveland 8, New York 7 -- Former Dodger Jose Hernandez hit two two-run homers against new Yankee starter Darrell May and drove in five runs at Yankee Stadium and the Indians ended a four-game losing streak.

Cleveland, which had dropped 10 of 12 to the Yankees and 11 of 12 to them on the road, ended New York’s six-game winning streak. The Yankees dropped to third place in the East, behind Boston and Baltimore, after passing the Orioles on Friday.

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Tampa Bay 5, Detroit 4 -- Jonny Gomes stopped the Devil Rays’ 10-game losing streak in dramatic fashion, hitting a two-run, ninth-inning homer against Troy Percival (1-3) at St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Devil Rays were two outs from owning the longest skid in the majors this season when Travis Lee singled. Gomes hit the next pitch over the 404-foot sign in center field.

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Oakland 10, Chicago 1 -- Barry Zito (6-8) pitched two-hit ball for seven innings at Chicago and Mark Kotsay hit a three-run homer to lead the Athletics, who have won 12 of 15 and improved to 6-2 against the winningest team in the majors.

Nick Swisher led off the seventh by reaching on third baseman Pablo Ozuna’s second error of the game. Two outs later, Jason Kendall singled. Kotsay then homered to give the Athletics a 5-1 lead.

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Texas 12, Toronto 10 -- Mark Teixeira hit two of the Rangers’ five home runs, all of them coming with two out, and drove in six runs at Arlington, Texas. He had a run-scoring single to go with his homers that increased his league-leading total to 24.

Kenny Rogers (10-4) overcame a shaky first inning, working through the seventh in his first home appearance since the June 29 incident in which he shoved two cameramen on the field.

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Kansas City 12, Minnesota 8 -- Mike Sweeney had five hits and three runs batted in, and the Royals scored six runs in the sixth inning to help beat the Twins at Kansas City, Mo.

Sweeney’s five hits gave him eight consecutive hits, tying a club record, before grounding out in the eighth. He had hits in his last three at-bats Friday night.