MINNEAPOLIS - The team that baseball couldn't get rid of will be around for at least another day. <br>
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Minnesota flustered Tim Hudson and Oakland with a seven-run fourth inning, and Eric Milton shut down the Athletics as the Twins forced a decisive fifth game in the AL division series with an 11-2 victory Saturday. <br>
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Nearly eliminated by baseball's owners this winter, Minnesota is one win away from the AL championship series. Game 5 is Sunday afternoon in Oakland, with Mark Mulder pitching for the A's against Brad Radke. <br>
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MVP candidate Miguel Tejada gave Oakland an early lead with a two-run homer, but his throwing error started the fateful fourth and led to another early exit by Hudson. <br>
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Oakland was forced to a fifth game in the opening round for the third straight year. The A's, eliminated by the New York Yankees the past two seasons, lost for the fifth straight time when they were one win away from the ALCS. <br>
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Hudson frequently went deep in the count and wound up throwing 90 pitches in 3 1-3 innings - his shortest outing since lasting three innings on Sept. 19, 2001, against Texas. <br>
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Hudson allowed seven runs - two earned - five hits and two walks. He has allowed 11 runs in 8 2-3 innings of the series and has started both games Oakland has lost in the series. He got a no-decision in the opener of the series. <br>
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Milton (1-0) gave up six hits, two runs and a walk while striking out three, and Doug Mientkiewicz went 3-for-4 with a two-run homer for the Twins. <br>
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Mientkiewicz started the fourth-inning rally with a single and A.J. Pierzynski worked a one-out walk. <br>
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Then the A's - who talked about keeping their composure and not letting the noise bother them after 6-3 win in Game 3 - came completely unraveled as the Metrodome playoff record crowd of 55,960 roared. <br>
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When the damage was done, this was the result: two wild pitches, a hit batsman, two errors, four hits and seven unearned runs. <br>
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Tejada threw Luis Rivas' grounder over Eric Chavez's head at third, allowing Mientkiewicz to score and giving the Twins a 3-2 advantage, their first lead since Game 1. <br>
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Pierzynski slid home on a wild pitch by Hudson, and Jacque Jones was plunked on his foot. <br>
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Scott Hatteberg fielded Cristian Guzman's grounder and threw errantly to catcher Ramon Hernandez. Rivas stopped short of the plate, let the ball trickle by him and scored to make it 5-2. <br>
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Game 1 loser Ted Lilly relieved, and Corey Koskie got his fifth RBI of the series with a single that scored Jones. <br>
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Guzman scored on a wild pitch by Lilly, and Torii Hunter hit a liner to center that Terrence Long fielded before tripping on the turf and letting Hunter get a double. <br>
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Mientkiewicz drove in Hunter with a single, his second hit of the inning, before Cuddyer flied out to end the inning. <br>
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Shortly after that, the Twins' clubhouse crew started loading their equipment for a trip to California. <br>
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Hudson had already started to falter in the third after Tejada's homer gave him a 2-0 lead. <br>
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Guzman drove in a run with a groundout, and David Ortiz - 0-for-8 in the first three games - doubled to tie it. <br>
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Milton was rolling this summer, picking up his 13th victory with a three-hit shutout against the White Sox on Aug. 1, but five days later he tore the meniscus in his left knee while warming up in the bullpen in Baltimore. <br>
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Returning to the rotation Sept. 2, Milton struggled to regain his rhythm until two strong starts in the final week of the regular season. <br>
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He helped the Twins finally escape a first inning without falling behind - and barely, too, after Hatteberg hit a one-out bloop double and Tejada and Chavez followed with long flyouts. <br>
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Oakland outscored Minnesota 8-0 in the first inning in the first three games of the series. <br>
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Effectively running his fastball inside against the five righties in Oakland's lineup, Milton consistently hit 93-94 mph on the stadium radar and cruised once he got the lead.Notes: Jack Morris, a Minnesota native who threw 10 shutout innings in the Twins' 1-0 Game 7 victory over Atlanta in the 1991 World Series, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Twins third base coach Al Newman - an infielder on the '91 team. ... Mientkiewicz became just the second player to get two hits in an inning during a division series. Chuck Knoblauch did it for the New York Yankees in 2000 against Oakland. ... Lilly's line this series: four innings, 10 hits, six runs. ... The Twins' seven-run fourth was the most by any team in a division series. Six runs had been done six times, most recently by St. Louis in the seventh inning of Game 1 against Arizona on Wednesday. The seven runs also tied an AL playoff record, set six times previously and most recently by Seattle in the sixth inning of Game 3 in last year's ALCS against the Yankees. ... Jermaine Dye was 3-for-3 for Oakland. ... Ortiz, 1-for-8 lifetime against Hudson coming into the game, got Minnesota's first hit - an infield single in the second - and went 2-for-3. <br>
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