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Bay's walk-off ends marathon game

Jun 29, 2008 - 4:53 AM By Brad Everett PA SportsTicker Contributing Writer

PITTSBURGH (Ticker) -- Struggling all night long while being forced to endure a contest which had already lasted four hours that was also delayed 42 minutes because of rain, Jason Bay just wanted the game to end.

The two-time All-Star just didn't expect it to end the way it did.

Bay hit a walk-off home run in the 13th inning, lifting the Pittsburgh Pirates to a 4-3 interleague victory over the Tampa Bay Rays at PNC Park on Saturday.

In a seesaw game which saw three ties and three lead changes, Bay smacked a two-out 2-2 fastball to left-center field off Jason Hammel (3-3) for his 16th home run of the season. Bay had been 0-for-5 with three strikeouts before coming up with the huge blast.

"You keep going out there knowing you're not having the best day, but that's the funny thing about baseball. One at-bat can turn your worst day into your best," Bay said.

John Van Benschoten (1-2) pitched a scoreless 13th to earn the second win of his career, and first since 2004. The Pirates' first-round pick of the 2001 draft was at the tail end of a Pirates' bullpen that allowed just one hit and two base runners over the final five innings.

The Pirates upped their record to 29-0 when leading after seven innings and snapped the Rays' four-game winning streak, but it wasn't easy. Pittsburgh took a 3-2 lead on a Doug Mientkiewicz pinch-hit RBI single in the bottom of the seventh.

But with usually reliable Pirates reliever Damaso Marte on the mound - he had not given up a run in his past seven appearances - the Rays shot back when pinch-hitter Johnny Gomes worked Marte for a 15-pitch at-bat, and drilled a 3-2 offering over the center field wall for his sixth home run of the season.

"I kept battling," Gomes said. "As a leadoff hitter late in the game, I was just trying to get on base any way I could. I just made some good contact."

Early on, it appeared as if the Rays would turn the game into a rout as they quickly got to spot starter Ty Taubenheim. Taubenheim was recalled earlier in the day from Class AAA Indianapolis to help out an injury-depleted rotation.

B.J. Upton and Carl Crawford singled on Taubenheim's first two pitches and the red-hot Evan Longoria followed with a sacrifice fly - his eighth RBI in the past four games - to put the Rays on the board first.

However, Taubenheim calmed down and didn't allow another hit until fifth. After the Pirates tied the score in the second, Taubenheim notched his first career RBI on a fifth-inning double to give the Pirates a 2-1 lead.

The Rays got to Taubenheim again the sixth, registering four hits and tying the contest on a Dioner Navarro RBI single. Taubenheim, a 6-foot-5, 255 pound righthander making his ninth career start, allowed two runs and seven hits, with four strikeouts and three walks in six innings.

"Ty set the tempo," Pirates manager John Russell said of Taubenheim. "He threw the ball outstanding. He used both sides of the plate and provided a start which we really needed."

Counterpart Edwin Jackson allowed three runs, six hits and two walks with three strikeouts in six innings. The righthander has just two wins in his last 14 starts.

The Rays had won 10 of their past 13 games, and missed out on a chance to move into first place in the American League East after Boston lost to Houston, 11-10, earlier in the night.

"When you win a game like that, it's a tough win. When lose a game like that, it's a tough loss," said Rays manager Joe Maddon. "A lot of things that transpired in that game could have gone another way, but they didn't. It was just a highly contested game that we lost."