Baseball-Ninth-inning rally puts Twins back on winning track

Aug 1 (The Sports Xchange) - With their offense sputtering and their lead in the wild-card race dwindling, the Minnesota Twins did what they had to do on Saturday to get a 3-2 victory over the Seattle Mariners. The Twins scratched together three runs, two on wild pitches, with catcher Kurt Suzuki getting the game-winning hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth when he ripped a single through the hole at shortstop. "I was excited, I was pumped up," Suzuki said. "Anybody who plays this game wants to be in that position. I don't care where you are in the standings, you want to be in that spot." The win for Minnesota kept them one game ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the race for the second wild-card spot in the American League and two games better than the Toronto Blue Jays. "We needed a win," Twins manager Paul Molitor said. "We've been finding out, wins get a little bit tougher. You have to find a way to stay with the game and tonight we were rewarded at the end." Trevor May got the win, pitching a shutout inning in the ninth before the Twins' rally. Twins starter Kyle Gibson allowed two runs on six hits and one walk, striking out four in seven innings. He was in danger of seeing the game spiral out of control in his final innings, allowing a single and a double that put two runners in scoring position and nobody out. But Gibson dug in, getting a fly out to shallow center and two groundouts to get out of the inning unscathed and with the Twins still down just one run. "You just have to get the last two hitters out of your mind," Gibson said. "That's what I told myself before I got on the mound there. You have to execute three to seven pitches." (Editing by Greg Stutchbury)