AL PENNANT CHASE Mariners need 13 innings to defeat O's

Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-run homer and Carlos Guillen drove in three runs.
BALTIMORE (AP) -- The Seattle Mariners knew they needed to win to keep pace in the playoff race.
So, even if it meant playing five hours with a depleted bullpen, they were going to do everything possible to beat the Baltimore Orioles.
Kerry Ligtenberg hit Bret Boone with a pitch in the 13th inning, forcing in the tiebreaking run Friday night in the Mariners' 6-4 victory.
Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-run homer and Carlos Guillen drove in three runs for the Mariners, who remained two games behind first-place Oakland in the AL West and a half-game behind Boston in the wild-card race.
"We say we don't like to scoreboard watch, but we're into the midnight hour," Seattle manager Bob Melvin said. "Everybody else looked like they were winning up there, so we had to win that game."
Overcomes blown lead
Seattle, coming off consecutive shutout losses at Tampa Bay, blew a three-run lead before pulling out a victory.
"Right now they're all big, because we haven't been playing well," Boone said.
With one out in the 13th, Suzuki singled and took third on a double by Randy Winn. After Edgar Martinez was walked intentionally to load the bases, Ligtenberg (1-2) struck Boone in the arm with a pitch.
"I wasn't expecting that pitch. Something away or maybe an offspeed pitch," Boone said. "That was the last pitch I was thinking he was going to throw. It got away from him."
It was only the second time in his 312-game career that Ligtenberg hit a batter with a pitch.
"The whole idea was to get a ground ball out of Boone," Orioles manager Mike Hargrove said. "He was trying to throw a sinker and it got away from him."
Guillen followed with a sacrifice fly.
Rhodes wins
Arthur Rhodes (3-3) retired Brook Fordyce in the bottom of the 13th with runners on second and third.
"We hung in there. We never gave up on this game," Rhodes said.
The Mariners were without Armando Benitez, who has a bad back, so Melvin counted heavily on Rhodes to get the job done.
"Arthur is our guy out there," he said. "In that situation you have to go with your veteran guy."
B.J. Surhoff homered, and Brian Roberts, Luis Matos and Larry Bigbie had four hits apiece for the Orioles, who have lost 10 of 12. Baltimore had a season-high 21 hits and stranded 20 runners.
"We swung the bats well," Hargrove said. "We only got four runs out of it, but it was probably one of the better games we have played all year."
Nineteen of the 21 hits were singles, the most singles by an Orioles team since Baltimore had 19 singles against Oakland in May 1974.
The Orioles tied it with two outs in the ninth against Shigetoshi Hasegawa, who blew his first save opportunity in 15 tries this season.
After Bigbie led off the ninth with a single and took second on a walk, Tony Batista grounded into a double play. But Surhoff grounded an RBI single to right, only the seventh time in 56 appearances this season that Hasegawa yielded a run.