BOSTON — The Orioles did not hand a victory to the Red Sox on a silver platter yesterday, but they came pretty close.

While the Sox have produced a long list of fantastic Fenway finishes to pull out exciting victories, this one was different. This time, they had help.

The six-run, ninth-inning rally that gave Boston a highly improbable 6-5 thriller over Baltimore was not as much about Boston taking it away as the Orioles giving it away.

“`It’s a game we should have won. End of story,” said Baltimore first baseman Kevin Millar. “There’s no reason we should have lost that game. I feel terrible for (Jeremy) Guthrie (Baltimore’s starting pitcher). He gave us a great start. Games in this park are never over. You have to get 27 outs. But we were up, 5-0, and we should win this game.”

Millar’s former teammate, Jason Varitek, did not disagree.

“We got the breaks at the right time late,” said the Red Sox captain, who had one of the key hits in the wild ninth, a two-run double.

Not since April 10, 1998, had Boston been down by five runs in the ninth and come back to win. They won that one, 9-7, on a Mo Vaughn home run.

Yesterday, the Sox did not even get a runner to third base in the first eight innings. Guthrie, a right-hander claimed on waivers from the Cleveland organization over the winter, was making only his second major-league start. He is in the rotation only because of injury problems. But he was outstanding yesterday.

He allowed only five base runners in eight innings and got the first man, Julio Lugo, on a routine grounder to open the ninth. The next batter, Coco Crisp, hit a little popup in front of the plate.

That’s when the Fenway frenzy began. Amazingly, perhaps 95 percent of the 36,379 fans were still in the stands, still cheering. And given the team’s recent history, they were still expecting something wild to happen.

It did. Catcher Ramon Hernandez did not handle the popup and Crisp was on. And Guthrie was out. He had thrown only 91 pitches, and looked great doing it.

“It was kind of weird,” David Ortiz said. “The guy had been dealing the whole game and he was coming out. I was like, ‘What happened?’  ”

“This was only his second start,” said Baltimore manager Sam Perlozzo. “We definitely had a few fresh arms in the pen. He wanted to stay in but that was definitely my decision.”

“I told him,” Guthrie said of a discussion with his manager in the top of the ninth, “that if a guy gets on, come and get me if you want. When I said that I was thinking a base hit or a walk. … He made the decision. It was the right one. No one could have expected that to happen.”

“That” was a collapse as much as a rally. Ortiz, facing Danys Baez, did what he does so often in the ninth. He had a big hit, this one a double to center.

Sox fans expected that much. Most of the rest was not expected.

Willie Mo Pena, in the game because Manny Ramirez had been removed because of tightness in his hamstring, singled. Varitek had his double. Three walks were mixed in, one intentional.

The Orioles survived a very close call at the plate on Alex Cora’s bases-loaded grounder for the second out. That was a gamble by second-baseman Brian Roberts that worked out. But Lugo worked the count full, then hit a grounder well wide of first. Millar ranged over to field it.

“I got a late jump off the mound,” said Orioles closer Chris Ray, who was on the mound by that point. “The ball (Millar’s throw) was coming out of the sun a little and I lost the ball a little bit.”

It would have been a very close play. Lugo felt he had it beat. It didn’t matter. Ray didn’t make the catch. The ball bounced off his glove and back toward the plate.

Two runs scored as the ball rolled away and the Sox came racing onto the field to celebrate the most improbable victory yet this year. The play was initially ruled an error and later changed to a single with one RBI, the winning run scoring on Ray’s error.

“A dropped popup, and the next thing you know . . . ,” Sox manager Terry Francona said. “It’s a combination of some magic here and some really good players that don’t quit. You just want a chance to get the tying run to the plate, and all of a sudden it was unfolding.”

“When you’re down five runs and one of the tough guys is pitching, you don’t have a lot of hope,” said Lugo, who is still learning about Fenway frenzies.

Varitek felt the victory was an important one.

“It just keeps building the confidence for the team,” he said.

The Sox now lead their division by eight games, the biggest margin they have had since Sept. 30, 1995.

“You’ve got to keep playing the game,” Ortiz said after the game. “It’s not over until the last out. You keep playing and good things happen. This feels good, because it seemed like we had no chance.”

pkenyon@projo.com