A’s edge Mariners on sac fly

OAKLAND, Calif. – Bobby Crosby got mad when the Mariners intentionally walked two batters in front of him. That anger helped him get a big win for Oakland.

Crosby’s sacrifice fly with one out in the ninth scored pinch-runner Esteban German with the winning run Monday night in the Athletics’ 6-5 victory over Seattle.

“When they walk people in front of me, it puts a fire under me,” Crosby said. “I think it’s a good fire. ‘So, you want to face me? We’ll see what happens. I’ll show you you made a mistake.’ “

The A’s maintained a one-game lead in the A.L. West over second-place Anaheim, which won 5-3 at Texas.

Oakland held Ichiro Suzuki to one hit, leaving him five shy of George Sisler’s 84-year-old record of 257. The Mariners have six games remaining.

“It’s official shouting distance now,” manager Bob Melvin said.

Suzuki has had aspirations of this record since 1994, when he broke the Japanese mark for hits in a season.

“That’s when I heard about the record over here and became interested,” he said.

Octavio Dotel (5-2) pitched a perfect ninth, getting two strikeouts and Mark Kotsay’s clutch catch against the center-field wall on a hard-hit ball by Jose Lopez.

Erubiel Durazo hit a bloop double off Ron Villone (7-6) leading off the bottom half, a ball between left fielder Raul Ibanez and Lopez, the shortstop. The two didn’t communicate, and the ball went off Lopez’s glove and dropped in shallow left.

“It just fell in. They both called for it, and with the urgency of it, it was just too loud for them,” Melvin said. “Lopez was aware where Ibanez was. It just fell in the Bermuda Triangle.”

Jermaine Dye’s groundout moved Durazo to third, then Scott Hatteberg drew an intentional walk to put runners on the corners. German ran for Durazo, and Marco Scutaro was also intentionally walked.

Crosby, coming off a 5-for-32 trip, flied to right on a 1-0 pitch to to win it.

Dye and Scutaro homered earlier, but the A’s couldn’t hold their lead.

Willie Bloomquist tied the game at 5 with a three-run homer off Barry Zito in the seventh following consecutive singles by Lopez and Dan Wilson. Pitching coach Curt Young went out to chat with Zito before Bloomquist’s at-bat and, in hindsight, Oakland would have been better off taking him out then.

Suzuki singled after the homer, then Zito got Randy Winn to fly out before Chad Bradford came on to retire Edgar Martinez for the final out of the inning.

Suzuki went 1 for 4 with the seventh-inning single.

“It would be outstanding if he broke the record here and didn’t hurt us in the process,” said A’s infielder Mark McLemore, who played with Suzuki the past three seasons in Seattle. “I got to see the majority of the hits.”

The grounds crew worked nearlhy 22 hours straight to convert the field following Sunday night’s NFL game.