BALTIMORE _ The Orioles appeared to be on the brink of another exciting late-inning comeback on Tuesday night, but there's a guy named Mookie Betts who simply cannot be contained at Camden Yards.
Betts, who hit five home runs over two games here the last time he was in town, hit two more and provided all the offense the Boston Red Sox needed to score a 5-3 victory and tighten the already razor-close American League East standings.
He delivered the kind of heroics Red Sox fans have come to expect from their MVP candidate, who has 28 home runs, 89 RBIs and leads the major leagues with 285 total bases. But he has taken his performance to a whole new level at Oriole Park.
In all, he has seven homers and 13 RBIs in his last 16 at-bats here.
And to think the big story Tuesday night in the seventh inning was the combined no-hitter that Red Sox's starter Eduardo Rodriguez and reliever Matt Barnes were working on until Orioles' Steve Pearce broke it up after one out with an infield single.
Betts had already given the Red Sox a three-run lead with his first homer of the night off Orioles starter Yovani Gallardo in the fifth inning, but the Orioles went from being no-hit for 6 1/3 innings to tying the game on a two-run single by Matt Wieters and a bases-loaded walk to Adam Jones in the seventh.
They left the bases loaded in that inning and would soon regret it after Betts came up with a runner on in the eighth and launched his second homer, a two-run shot to left off reliever Brad Brach.
Though the Orioles made a little noise against the struggling Boston bullpen in the eighth, the Red Sox held on register their fifth victory in a row and pull even with the O's in the standings with a 66-52 record.
