INTERLEAGUE Gusting winds plague Pirates

Windy conditions helped the Rangers score in the bottom of the 10th inning.
ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) -- Pittsburgh went from losing in one windy city to another one.
Hank Blalock's looping RBI single with two outs in the 10th inning pushed home Laynce Nix with the winning run, and the Texas Rangers in beat the Pirates 6-5 on Monday night in the first interleague game of the season.
Like Nix, Blalock hit a fly ball to center that was knocked down by winds gusting near 25 mph and dropped several feet in front of charging outfielder Tike Redman.
Redman came closer to catching Blalock's ball than the one hit by Nix, but couldn't recover after initially taking a step back.
"I wasn't in far enough and it just fell in," Redman said. "I thought it would be pretty easy with a big yard because I like to run. Those would have been real easy to catch if I played here all of the time."
Bad jumps
Manager Lloyd McClendon, back after serving a two-game suspension during the Pirates' last two games against the Chicago Cubs, said Redman had "bad jumps."
Pittsburgh lost for the eighth time in nine games despite scoring more than three runs for the first time in that span.
Blalock hit a full-count pitch against Mike Johnston (0-3) for the game-winner. Nix had moved to third on Michael Young's line-drive single with two outs.
"It took two bleeders to win," Young said. "That stuff happens, and we'll definitely take it."
Texas has never lost to the Pirates. But the Rangers, who left Pittsburgh with a three-game sweep two years ago in their only other series, struck out a season-high 15 times against five pitchers.
Both teams got runners to third in the ninth before inning-ending strikeouts. And both had running catches in the outfield.
Late chances
Alfonso Soriano led off the Texas ninth with a single against Salomon Torres, then moved up on a groundout and wild pitch before Chad Allen struck out.
Rob Mackowiak had a leadoff single and was stranded when Redman struck out against Francisco Cordero (2-0), who stayed in to pitch the 10th.
Mackowiak tracked down Brad Fullmer's flyball near the fence in the left-center gap after Soriano's leadoff hit. Nix went a long way to get Bobby Hill's flyball in the right-center gap before Redman struck out.
Texas starter R.A. Dickey, 0-4 in seven starts since May 2, had a 5-3 lead after Gary Matthews Jr. hit a two-run single in the fifth.
But Dickey was out of the game an inning later when Craig Wilson hit a tying two-run homer, his 13th, two outs after Jason Kendall's leadoff single.
The Pirates led 3-0 for Kip Wells, a Texas native who was 4-1 with a 1.97 ERA in eight previous appearances against the Rangers when pitching for the White Sox from 1999-2001.
Redman and Jose Castillo, the bottom two hitters in Pittsburgh's lineup, both drove in runs in the second, with Redman getting an RBI single and Castillo a two-run single that made it 3-0.
But Brad Fullmer's sacrifice fly in the second pushed home Texas' first run, and Mark Teixeira followed with his eighth homer, a two-run shot that tied the game.
Wells struck out four of his first seven batters, walking the other three. He struck out eight and walked five, throwing 62 of 112 pitches for strikes and allowing seven hits over 4 2/3 innings.