SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 9 (UPI) -- Rick Ankiel hit a long home run in the 11th inning Friday, giving the Atlanta Braves a 5-4 win over San Francisco that deadlocked their playoff series.
Ankiel's blast into the cove beyond the right field seats decided a wild game that included the ejection of Atlanta Manager Bobby Cox in the second inning and the departure of Braves closer Billy Wagner with an injured left hip in the 10th.
Both Cox and Wagner have said this will be the last season of their careers and Wagner's status for the remainder of the playoffs was in question at the end of the game.
After the first extra-inning contest of the 2010 playoffs, the Braves and Giants head to Atlanta deadlocked at 1-1 in the best-of-five National League Division Series. The Braves will host games Sunday and Monday.
Related
Atlanta rallied from a four-run deficit to tie it in the eighth, and then escaped a huge jam in the 10th when the Giants loaded the bases with one out and appeared ready to take a 2-0 series lead.
Ankiel, who hit six home runs in 211 at-bats during the regular season, came up with one out in the 11th and worked a 2-2 count against Ramon Ramirez. He then clubbed a high drive that left no doubt from the moment it left the bat.
Kyle Farnsworth, who came on after Wagner had thrown only three pitches in the 10th, got a critical double-play grounder off the bat of Buster Posey to end that inning and then worked around a one-out single in the 11th to get the victory.
Cox became the third manager to be ejected in this year's playoffs, joining Tampa Bay's Joe Maddon and Minnesota's Ron Gardenhire. Cox, who has been kicked out of a game 159 times, argued that Alex Gonzalez should have been called safe on a grounder because San Francisco first baseman Aubrey Huff had come off the bag too soon.
Replays indicated Cox was incorrect.
All of San Francisco's runs came in the first two innings, three of them on a Pat Burrell homer in the first. A double by Alex Gonzalez in the eighth drove in two Atlanta runs and tied it at 4-4.
