A-Rod nearly carried his bat all the way to first base, then raised a fist in triumph after the drive off Matt Guerrier, who had just replaced left-hander Brian Duensing with Minnesota ahead 4-3. The homer was Rodriguez's 587th, moving him past Frank Robinson into sole possession of seventh place.
It was a curious one-out pitching change by Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, given that Rodriguez entered 4-for-6 with three home runs off Guerrier. The home run was A-Rod's fourth of the season.
Rodriguez is tied with Eddie Murray for third in career slams, trailing only Lou Gehrig (23) and Manny Ramirez (21).
The intentional walk was unusual, too. It was just the 15th time in Rodriguez's career a batter was intentionally walked to load the bases for him, according to STATS LLC. The last six occasions have been walks to Teixeria – including one by Tampa Bay's Andy Sonnanstine last Oct. 4 when Rodriguez had two homers and seven RBIs in the sixth inning to keep alive his streaks of 30-homer and 100-RBI seasons.
Rodriguez is 4-for-4 with two homers and 14 RBIs following international walks to Teixeira, according to STATS LLC.
New York, which overcame a seventh-inning deficit against Scott Baker, has won 24-of-27 regular-season home games against Minnesota dating to 2002, including nine in a row.
In the opener of a four-game series on the same mid-May weekend last year, Brett Gardner's inside-the-park homer and ninth-inning triple helped the Yankees to a 5-4 victory, the first of three straight last-inning wins en route to a four-game sweep of Minnesota.
This time, Gardner homered into the right-field bleachers in the fourth and slid home to score from first on Teixeira's fifth-inning double.
Joe Mauer hit his first home run since the opening week of the season, then singled in the tying run in the seventh inning and scored on Justin Morneau's double off a brief and ineffective appearance by Damaso Marte as Minnesota overcame a 3-2 deficit.
Joba Chamberlain (1-1) struck out the side in the eighth. After Francisco Cervelli hit an RBI triple in the eighth — his second triple this month – Mariano Rivera finished.
A.J. Burnett settled down after a wild opening two innings, when he threw just 17 of 39 pitches for strikes. He wound up allowing three runs — two earned — seven hits and four walks in 6 2/3 innings. Baker gave up five runs and 10 hits in six-plus innings, struck out nine and walked none.
With New York trailing 4-3, Cervelli legged out an infield hit leading off the seventh against Baker, beating second baseman Orlando Hudson's throw. Derek Jeter, in a 1-for-23 slide, lined a pitch off Baker's right leg and wound up with a double when the ball ricocheted into right field.
Duensing relieved, Gardner lined to left and Teixeira was walked before A-Rod came up.
Mauer tied the score 2-2 in the fifth with an opposite-field homer to left, just his second homer of the season. Bothered by a bruised left heel, Mauer had not homered since April 6. The gap of 91 at-bats between homers was his longest since he went 102 without one from Aug. 16-Sept. 15, 2008, according to STATS.
Minnesota went ahead in the second when Nick Punto walked on four pitches with the bases loaded. That followed Rodriguez's failure to pick up Alexi Casilla's sacrifice to third cleanly, an error that made the run unearned.
Notes
Yankees RF Nick Swisher, who has been bothered by a sore left biceps, was replaced by Randy Winn after three innings. Swisher went to a hospital for an MRI … Teixeira was thrown out by LF Delmon Young when he tried to score on Rodriguez's fifth-inning single. Joe Girardi hasn't announced his starters for next week's series against Boston, leading to the possibility Javier Vazquez could be pushed back or skipped. .. The Twins activated LHP Jose Mijares from the 15-day DL.