AP Photo/David GuttenfelderOakland Athletics celebrate as they leave the field after beating the Boston Red Sox 5-1 in their Major League Baseball regular season game at Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Wednesday, March 26, 2008.
TOKYO " Emil Brown found a safe way home: hit the ball over the fence.
One day after Brown made a costly baserunning mistake, his three-run homer in the third inning led Oakland over the Boston Red Sox 5-1 Wednesday night and gave the Athletics a split of their opening two-game series.
Following Major League Baseball's third season-opening series in Japan, the teams were to head back to the United States on 10-hour flights across the Pacific with a split. The Chicago Cubs and New York Mets split their Japanese series in 2000, as did the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Devil Rays in 2004.
With the unusual schedule, Boston and Oakland will now resume spring training. The A's have three exhibition games against San Francisco, and Boston plays three against the Los Angeles Dodgers, including one at the Los Angeles Coliseum on Saturday.
They resume the regular season with two games against each other in Oakland starting Tuesday.