One day after playing a game in which everyone holding a bat seemed to score, the Orioles and Detroit Tigers stayed away from home plate for much of Tuesday.

Then both sides exploded again, this time in the late innings, as the Tigers staged a ninth-inning rally and Johnny Damon hit a two-run game-winning homer in the 11th to give Detroit a 7-5 win.

Damon's home run, which ended a three hour and 56-minute marathon, was off David Hernandez (3-7) and it came on a night in which Damon also notched his 2,500th career hit.

The Orioles (25-58) had 17 hits but left a season-high 17 on base and were 3-for-17 with runners in scoring position.

Trailing 5-3 in the bottom of the ninth, Detroit's Miguel Cabrera crushed an Alfredo Simon pitch 407 feet into the night for a game-tying two-run homer.

Simon, who had blown just one save in 11 previous chances, was asked to pick up a five-out save for the first time as a closer. He survived the eighth, entering with a runner on third and one out and didn't allow a run.

The ninth was a different story. He walked Damon and struck out Magglio Ordonez before Cabrera tied the game with his 21st homer of the season.

It was the second consecutive inning in which the Tigers scored two runs. Using triples by Cabrera and Brandon Inge and a Brennan Boesch RBI single, the Tigers scored twice against Orioles reliever Jason Berken in the eighth.

Berken, who had allowed one run in 26 of his previous 28 appearances, notched a key strikeout of Ordonez to end the seventh. But, much like Simon, he couldn't duplicate the effort his second time on the mound.

All but one of the game's runs occurred after the sixth.

Heading into the seventh, the Orioles were down 1-0 and had stranded 10 base runners. But they took the lead on Nick Markakis' two-run homer and added another run in the seventh on a RBI single by Felix Pie, who was playing his first big-league game since April 15.

The bullpen, however, couldn't hold the lead for Jake Arrieta, who is winless in his past four starts after winning his first two. Arrieta allowed seven hits, two walks and one run while striking out four in 6 1/3 innings.

Arrieta allowed a base runner in all but two of the innings he pitched, but only one scored – on an RBI single by Alex Avila in the second inning. Detroit took the 1-0 lead into the seventh, when Markakis hit his fifth home run of the season and second in five games, a two-run shot to give the Orioles a 2-1 lead. They tacked on a third run in the inning and Markakis added an RBI single in the eighth.

Early on, the low-scoring battle couldn't have been more different from the first game of the series on Monday, when the teams combined for 14 runs in the first two innings in an eventual 12-9 Detroit victory.

The Orioles threw 80 pitches in the first two innings on Monday; Arrieta didn't throw his 80th until the sixth.

Armando Galarraga, who nearly threw a perfect game in a complete game shutout against the Cleveland Indians on June 2, was far from perfect on Tuesday.

He allowed 10 hits, three walks and hit a batter. And he still had a shutout before serving up Markakis' homer. Galarraga was yanked three batters later after Matt Wieters tripled to right-center, the lumbering catcher's second career triple. His only other one also came against the Tigers and starter Justin Verlander on May 30, 2009. That was Wieters' first major-league hit.

The Orioles took a 3-1 lead when Pie singled home Wieters. Pie, who was batting .400 in eight games before tearing a muscle in his back, slapped his hands as he ran up the first base line.

Pie eventually was thrown out trying to steal second to end the seventh – or was he? Julio Lugo was at the plate and pulled his bat back on the pitchout with two strikes, which looked like it might be strike three.

But home plate umpire Joe West didn't see it as a swing, so Tigers catcher Alex Avila's throw to second nabbed Pie trying to steal. It led, however, to some confusion in the top of the eighth, when Cesar Izturis came out to the on-deck circle to lead off the inning, with Corey Patterson following him.

Then Lugo came out of the dugout, sent Patterson back to the bench and walked in front of Izturis to go into the batter's box again. The Tigers never questioned that the Orioles were batting out of order, so West's non-strikeout call, and the caught stealing, stood.

It was one of two strange plays with Lugo at the plate. In the second, Lugo attempted to bunt and fouled off a pitch. West called him out, because it was the third strike of the at-bat. But the Comerica Park scoreboard had the count at 2-1, so Lugo assumed he had a strike to play with.

Lugo looked like he got his revenge in the ninth with a RBI single that gave the Orioles an insurance run. That, though, was wiped away by Cabrera's ninth-inning homer.