Boston's Manny Ramirez lets his bat fly after striking out against Kansas City's Odalis Perez. Perez struck out a season-high 10 batters in the Royals' 10-9 victory Friday in Boston.

Boston ? Royals manager Buddy Bell was close to lifting Joey Gathright from the game after he twisted his right ankle while chasing David Ortiz’s triple in the third inning.

Good thing Bell didn’t.

Gathright hit a go-ahead, two-run double with two outs in the ninth, and Kansas City put another dent in Boston’s playoff hopes with a 10-9 victory over the Red Sox on Friday night.

“Going into the ninth inning, we just felt like we needed to go out there and do something,” Gathright said. “And we did. We stepped up.”

Mike Sweeney homered and had three RBIs for the Royals. After allowing six runs in the eighth inning and falling behind 9-8, they scored twice against Mike Timlin (6-5) in the ninth to extend their winning streak over Boston to four games.

Emil Brown led off the ninth with a single, Ryan Shealy was hit by a pitch and pinch-hitter Andres Blanco advanced the runners with a sacrifice. One out later, Gathright lined a double down the first-base line.

“It was a huge win for us,” Sweeney said. “When we get down in the ninth, usually we crumble. I got the boys fired up and told them, ‘Hey we’ve got to keep charging, this is our game to win.’ And we got some big hits.”

Ortiz had three hits and four RBIs for the Sox, who dropped 61â2 games behind the Twins in the wild-card standings.