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Facing Joe Mauer in the first inning of his
second career start, Bobby Cramer braced himself when the reigning
AL MVP sent a liner back up the middle.


      The ball hit Cramer's right leg, and he hurriedly picked it up
and threw Mauer out at first.

      "They're going to have to do more than that to get me out of
the game," the 30-year-old Oakland rookie said.

      Cramer earned his second consecutive win and Mark Ellis had
three hits, helping the Athletics beat the Minnesota Twins 6-2 on
Sunday.

      Besides the game, the AL Central-leading Twins also lost Mauer
to a balky left knee. Mauer tweaked the knee while swinging when he
grounded out in the sixth and was replaced defensively by Jose
Morales in the seventh.

      "We're going to see how it is the next couple of days and go
from there," Mauer said.

      Cramer (2-0) faced a much tougher lineup than he did in his big
league debut last week at Kansas City. He was working on a
three-hitter before Michael Cuddyer and Jim Thome went deep in the
sixth.


      The left-hander departed after Thome's two-out drive, but Brad
Ziegler, Michael Wuertz and Craig Breslow combined for 3 1-3
innings of one-hit ball.

      "It was a better test," Cramer said. "There are some great
hitters on that team and there were some fun at-bats, too. ... It's
fun to face guys who are going to be in the Hall of Fame. Good
lineup to face."

      Ellis and Akinori Iwamura each scored twice and drove in a pair
of runs against Francisco Liriano (14-8), who lost for the first
time since July 9 at Detroit. The lefty is 8-1 with a 2.84 ERA in
his last 12 starts.

      Iwamura hit a two-run single in Oakland's three-run first and
Ellis went deep with two out in the fifth, hitting a 3-1 pitch into
the seats in left-center to make it 5-0.

      "It was good to come in here against a good team," Ellis said.
"We know they rested some guys, they had a couple of guys out of
the lineup, but that's still a good team. To come in here and win
the series was huge."

      Liriano didn't get much sleep the previous night thanks to a
rash, but said his long night didn't affect his performance.

      "Liriano just didn't have his stuff it looked like today,"
Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "He was misfiring basically
from the get-go."

      The A's added an unearned run in the ninth after Gabe Gross'
grounder went between shortstop J.J. Hardy's legs. Gross scored two
batters later on Rajai Davis' single.

      Gardenhire was ejected in the fourth after Thome hit into a
bizarre double play. Davis appeared to drop Thome's fly ball to
center, but replays showed he made the catch before dropping the
ball as he prepared to throw to second. Delmon Young, who went to
second on the apparent drop, was subsequently called out for not
tagging up at first.


      The manager pointed out that second-base umpire John Hirschbeck
initially called Young safe at second after the throw.


      "I think they understand that something was really screwed up
out there," Gardenhire said. "Delmon had nowhere to go."
     

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Minnesota Twins

Mark Ellis had three hits, including a
two-run homer, and 30-year-old rookie Bobby Cramer won his second
consecutive start, helping the Oakland Athletics beat the Minnesota
Twins 6-2 on Sunday.

Ellis homers as A's top Twins 6-2

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