Jacoby Ellsbury, left, runs to first as Orioles pitcher Jim Miller makes his fateful throwing error to give the Sox the victory.

The Providence Journal / Bob Breidenbach

BOSTON — For sheer drama and utter improbability, it fell short of the Mother’s Day Miracle victory of May 13, 2007, when the Red Sox rallied from a 5-0 deficit with two outs in the ninth inning and beat the Baltimore Orioles, 6-5.

Yesterday, the Red Sox snapped awake in the seventh and scored in each of the final three innings to post a 5-4 comeback win over the Orioles.

Like last year, the Orioles helped with some sloppy defense and suspect bullpen work.

And like last year, the Red Sox, trying to gain ground on the Tampa Bay Rays, will gladly take it.

“What’s this one?” said a Red Sox employee afterward. “The Just-After-Labor Day Debacle?”

Artistic, it wasn’t. Essential, it was. At this point, they all are.

For six innings, the Red Sox slumbered against two Baltimore relievers, one of whom, Lance Cormier, was pressed into starting duty when Jeremy Guthrie was scratched from the assignment. (Trivia buffs will recall that it was Guthrie who was yanked by then-manager Sam Perlozzo in the ninth inning in the Mother’s Day Miracle). The same pitching staff that had been battered for 21 runs in the last two nights was somehow shutting the Sox out until the seventh.

“We didn’t played very good for six innings,” conceded white-hot Dustin Pedroia, who continued his Yaz-in-’67 impression with three more hits, two more runs scored and one more RBI. “Then, we played great.”

Then, it all began to unfold. A solo homer by Pedroia, a hit-batsman, a walk, a bunt single and another walk produced two runs in the seventh. Mark Kotsay’s two-run triple in the eighth got them tied.

Finally, in the ninth, a leadoff single by Alex Cora, two bunts and a throwing error by rookie Jim Miller sealed the win. Just like the game 16 months ago, it was capped by a bizarre play in the infield, allowing the winning run to cross the plate.

Drenched in an autumnal sun, the 455th straight sellout crowd searched without success for a reason to invest in the game through the first six innings. When the Sox began to stir in the seventh, the crowd had its invitation.

“Late in the game,” said Jason Varitek, “the crowd got energized. And that gives (players) energy.”

“We looked tired for the first five or six innings,” said Pedroia. “Then the crowd turned it up for us.”

In the big picture, this was hardly essential. The Sox sit comfortably in charge of the wildcard race — they led the White Sox and Twins by four games when action began yesterday — and a favorable schedule for the final 3 ½ weeks awaits. After this weekend, the Sox will play 13 of their last 19 at Fenway.

But if the Sox still have designs on the division title — and with it, the attendant home-field advantage — every game brims with significance.

The Sox have six games remaining with the Rays, but they’ll need to be no farther than four back when the first three-game set with Tampa Bay kicks off on Monday.

Given the Rays’ astounding success at home this season and their ability to avoid losing streaks, probably the best the Sox can hope for in the six remaining games is to win four. That would result in a net gain of two games and leave them two games back with 10 to play.

(Not insignificantly, a 4-2 record in the final six games with the Rays would give the Sox the season series between the two and allow the Sox to win the division should the clubs finish the regular season with the same record. That would represent the difference between opening on the road in Anaheim and opening at home against either Chicago or Minnesota).

So maybe, a few weeks from now, the image of Coco Crisp’s bunt, inexplicably running back into fair territory after it seemed almost certainly destined to roll foul, and Jim Miller air-mailing a throw into the left-field corner, and the mad pileup at home plate to greet Alex Cora will still be fresh.

Maybe when the Red Sox replay the highlights of the season, they’ll include Jacoby Ellsbury leaping over the bullpen wall to rob Aubrey Huff of a fifth-inning homer. Or revel in Cora’s baseball intelligence, leading him to expertly pivot and fake out Huff by throwing to third to cut him down for the first out in the eighth.

Good teams find ways to steal those kinds of victories. Bad teams, such as the Orioles, are just as likely to stumble upon novel ways to assure defeats.

“We won a game that was losable,” manager Terry Francona concluded.

In September, even debacles can be rewarding.

smcadam@projo.com