NEW YORK

With midnight approaching, the Baltimore Orioles’ bats awoke one more time.

Now they’ll get a last shot to finally overtake the New York Yankees.

J.J. Hardy hit an RBI double in the 13th inning and Baltimore bounced back from a demoralizing loss to outlast the Yankees 2-1 Thursday night, forcing a deciding Game 5 in the AL division series.

After splitting 22 games this year, it all comes down this: a winner-take-all match for a spot in the AL championship series against Detroit.

Game 1 winner CC Sabathia is set to pitch the deciding game for the Yankees against Jason Hammel.

The Orioles were 0 for 8 with runners in scoring position until Hardy doubled off David Phelps with one out to score Manny Machado, who had doubled.

“There hasn’t been a whole lot of opportunities to score runs,” Hardy said, “so when there are those opportunities, I think we’re trying a little bit too hard.”

Phelps had relieved in the 12th after Joba Chamberlain was hit by a flying broken bat, forcing him to leave with a bruised right elbow.

Jim Johnson bounced back from allowing Raul Ibanez’s pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning Wednesday to earn his second save in the series with a perfect 13th.

Hours after learning Joe Girardi had kept quiet that his father died last Saturday, the Yankees couldn’t rally late. This time, Girardi called upon Eric Chavez to pinch hit for slumping Alex Rodriguez. He lined out to third base to end it.

Baltimore’s win pushed all four division series to five games for the first time since the round began in 1995.

The Orioles have been pursuing the Yankees all season, cutting a 10-game deficit in July to zero in early September. Baltimore and New York were tied 10 times atop the East in the final month but the Yankees wrapped up the division on the final night of the regular season.

Seven Baltimore relievers pitched 7.1 innings of four-hit ball.

The Yankees held a moment of silence for Girardi’s dad, Jerry, who died Saturday at 81 and had a long bout with Alzheimer’s. Joe Girardi stood alone in front of the Yankees dugout and wiped his eyes after the national anthem. He blew a kiss to someone in the stands, then fist bumped several coaches and players.

Tigers close out A’s

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Already an ace and MVP, Justin Verlander proved to be the Detroit Tigers’ ultimate closer, too.

Verlander struck out 11 in a four-hitter, pitching Detroit into a second straight AL championship series a day after Jose Valverde failed to hold a ninth-inning lead with a 6-0 win against the Oakland Athletics in the decisive Game 5 of their division series Thursday night.

Verlander tossed his first career postseason shutout and complete game with a 122-pitch masterpiece. Verlander, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner and MVP, was so sharp nobody in the bullpen ever got up to throw. He struck out 22 in his wins on both ends of this nail-biting series.

After squandering two chances to clinch the series, including blowing a two-run ninth-inning lead in Game 4, manager Jim Leyland left it all up to Verlander just as he said he would.

Austin Jackson hit an RBI double in the third and a runscoring single as the Tigers added on in a four-run seventh. Prince Fielder hit an RBI single.

The Tigers are on to another ALCS despite getting just one RBI all series from Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera — on a bases-loaded hit by pitch, no less. Booed by the yellow towel-waving sellout crowd of 36,393 each time he stepped into the batter’s box. Cabrera finished 5 for 20, and it was his hard-hit ball dropped by Coco Crisp in a 5-4 Game 2 victory Sunday that allowed two runs to score.

Verlander became the fifth pitcher to start a winner-takeall playoff game the year after winning the Cy Young — and the first to win. In all four previous instances, that pitcher’s team lost the game: Steve Carlton (1981 Phillies), David Cone (1995 Yankees), Barry Zito (2003 Athletics), and Roy Halladay (2011 Phillies).

Omar Infante singled to start the third inning against A’s starter Jarrod Parker, then moved to second on a wild pitch. Then, with Cabrera batting after Jackson’s double and a sacrifice by Quintin Berry that moved him up a base, Parker threw another wild pitch that allowed Jackson to score.

Oakland struck out 50 times in a series of swings and misses riding high only a week ago after stunning the two-time reigning Al champion Rangers on the regular season’s final day to win the AL West. The Ks were the most in A’s franchise history for a five-game series.