A’s rally late, walk off with win

Doubles by Canha, Butler in 10th give Oakland victory

OAKLAND — After seven consecutive losses on the road, the A’s played hugely entertaining baseball against the Los Angeles Dodgers for 10 innings Tuesday night, pulling out a 5-4 win in the bottom of the 10th on back-to-back doubles by Mark Canha and Billy Butler.

Butler’s RBI, just the second of the month for him, was a shot down the right field line that right fielder Scott Van Slyke got to but couldn’t do anything with but slip as he made a late throw home.

Canha’s double, his career-high fourth hit, was a bullet off loser Yimi Garcia to left. Canha has six hits in his last eight at-bats. It came with much of the crowd of 35,067, the third sellout this season, having already left. The game featured a bobblehead of Dodgers batting coach Mark McGwire, recalling his 1987 Rookie of the Year season with the A’s.

Butler was hit with a traditional whipped cream pie after the game by Josh Reddick, and Marcus Semien helped make the moment more memorable with a Gatorade bath.

The A’s worked threetime Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw hard for seven innings. The result was just one run, but Oakland made the lefty throw 116 pitches. They were eager to get the Los Angeles ace out of the game. Even down 4-1, the A’s wasted no time in jumping on the Dodgers’ bullpen.

Danny Valencia singled, Josh Phegley doubled, and Canha doubled both men home, all off right-hander Pedro Baez. When Los Angeles went to lefty J.P. Howell with one out, Reddick got an infield hit to put men at the corners, and Semien tied the game with a single to left.

The Dodgers were able to preserve the tie only by having former A’s reliever Jim Johnson come on to strike out Billy Burns with men on second and third to end the eighth. Johnson was heavily booed in his return to the Coliseum. Mark Canha celebrates after scoring in the eighth inning. Canha hit a two-run double in the A’s three-run eighth, then led off the 10th with a double and scored the winning run on Billy Butler’s double. Canha finished with a career-high four hits.

With A’s reliever Pat Venditte on the mound, Oakland quickly got the first two outs of the top of the eighth. One more out would mean the game would come down to the A’s vs. the Dodgers’ bullpen rather than the A’s against threetime Cy Young Award-winner Kershaw.

To get that out, manager Bob Melvin thanked Venditte for his work and turned to Fernando Rodriguez. The right-hander was dinged by back-to-back infield hits before A.J. Ellis hit

MARK MCGWIRE HONORED

The A’s welcomed back Mark McGwire to the Coliseum with bobbleheads. For the story, go to Inside the A’s blog at ibabuzz.com/ athletics.

WEDNESDAY’S GAME

L.A. Dodgers (AlexWood 8-7) at A’s (Jesse Chavez 6-12), 12:35 p.m. CSNCA

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To view a photo gallery from Tuesday’s A’s-Dodgers game, go to photos.mercurynews. com. the first pitch he saw into the left field seats for his third homer, three runs that seemed to bury the A’s.

Kershaw was tough on the A’s, but not so tough that they didn’t take a 1-0 lead on him in the second.

Canha flared a single to left and Butler walked, setting up a rare Reddick sacrifice bunt to move the runners up a base. It was Reddick’s first sacrifice of the year and just the 12th for the A’s as a whole.

Semien followed with a grounder to deep second on which the only play was to first base, Canha coming home with the game’s first run.

Felix Doubront, getting his first start for the A’s after two stints in long relief, proved to be tough for the Dodgers to hit, although Los Angeles wasn’t without its chances to score.

Gifted with a run on Semien’s infield out, Doubront walked Ellis and Joc Pederson, the Dodgers’ eighth and ninth hitters, to open the third inning and got away with it.

He did the same to open the fifth and wasn’t as fortunate. A passed ball off the glove of catcher Phegley moved the runners up a base, and Jimmy Rollins’ grounder brought Ellis home with the run that tied it at 1-all. Doubront dug down to strike out Kike Hernandez and Justin Turner with the go-ahead run at third to keep the bleeding to a lone unearned run.

Coco Crisp (still aching n from a collision in the outfield Sunday) and Brett Lawrie (back) got the day off. Melvin described both as being “banged up.’’

Sean Doolittle, trying n to come back from his shoulder injury, will throw injury rehabilitation games Wednesday and Friday with Triple-A Nashville.