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  Saturday, Jul. 29 7:05pm ET
Reds defeat Expos in 11 innings
 
  RECAP | BOX SCORE | GAME LOG

MONTREAL (AP) -- Eddie Taubensee played out of character Saturday night.

Taubensee hit a game-tying homer with two outs in the ninth inning and homered again in the 11th to lead the Cincinnati Reds over the Montreal Expos 4-3.

"I'm not a guy who tries to go out and hit home runs to tie and win games," Taubensee said. "I just try to get good pitches to hit and hit them hard."

He homered off Javier Vazquez to overcome a 3-2 deficit in the ninth.

"I was mainly trying to find a way to get on base," Taubensee said. "I was just trying to keep the game alive."

The second homer came off Julio Santana (0-2) with one out in the 11th as Cincinnati improved to 8-4 in extra-innings.

The home runs were Taubensee's first since he connected on May 3 at Philadelphia. Batting a season-high .347 following that game, Taubensee hit just .211 (38-for-180) with four doubles and seven RBIs over his next 55 games.

"I started off the season well and then went into a huge slump," Taubensee said. "I've been working hard, trying to get out of it and I'm starting to reap some benefits."

Taubensee went 3-for-5 and raised his home run total to six for the season. With four hits Friday night, the Reds' catcher has gone 7-for-10 in the first two games of the series to raise his average from .239 to 257.

"I can't change the way I played the last few months, but I can try to pick it up over the last couple of months and try to help our team win, and that's all that matters," Taubensee said.

Mark Wohlers pitched two perfect innings, giving him eight scoreless innings since the Reds brought him up earlier this month.

Danny Graves (10-2) pitched three shutout innings in relief of Pete Harnisch, who allowed all three runs and seven hits in six innings.

"The bullpen and Eddie were the story tonight," Harnisch said. "I did all right. I struggled a little bit, kept us in the game a little bit. Danny was Houdini tonight, in and out of trouble, left and right. And Wohlers pitched two perfect innings. He's done that three or four times now so we've come to expect that from him."

Cincinnati's Sean Casey doubled in the sixth to extend his career-best hitting streak to 20 games.

After Montreal's Geoff Blum was thrown out at the plate by left fielder Dmitri Young while trying to score the winning run in the bottom half of the ninth, both teams failed to score in the 10th, despite putting runners in scoring position.

Barry Larkin hit a one-out single off Scott Strickland leading off and stole second. Ken Griffey Jr. was intentionally walked before Strickland got Dante Bichette to pop out to catcher Chris Widger. Reliever Scott Forster got Casey to ground to first to end the threat.

Milton Bradley singled off Graves to lead off the bottom half and advanced to second on Peter Bergeron's sacrifice.

Jose Vidro followed with a slow roller fielded by Graves, who threw to first for the second out as Bradley held at second. Vladimir Guerrero was intentionally walked and Graves struck out Mike Mordecai.

After allowing Larkin's one-out single in the first, Vazquez retired 13 in a row before Taubensee and Reese hit consecutive singles with two outs in the fifth.

Reese followed Taubensee's game-tying homer in the ninth with a single to chase Vazquez, who allowed three runs and seven hits in 8 2-3 innings. He had a season-high nine strikeouts and walked none.

Steve Kline struck out pinch-hitter Alex Ochoa to end the inning.

Blum had a run-scoring single in the fourth and Tomas De La Rosa hit his second major league homer off Harnisch leading off the fifth for a 2-0 lead. Jose Vidro's two-out RBI single drove in the Expos' second run of the inning.

Game notes
Harnisch is 1-3 in nine career starts in Montreal. ... Casey is hitting .395 (30-for-76) with four homers and 17 RBIs over the course of his streak, the longest by a Cincinnati player since Hal Morris hit safely in 29 consecutive games in 1996. ... Vazquez had a career-high 10 strikeouts last Sept. 14 at Los Angeles.
 


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