Rays claim marathon Game 2 to even ALCS going to Boston

Carlos Pena was 2-for-5 with a double as the Rays and Red Sox combined for 24 hits in the 11-inning affair. Doug Benc/Getty Images Related Links Rays down Red Sox in 11 innings to even ALCS John Donovan's Mailbag Comments, questions or obviously unfounded criticism? To e-mail Donovan, use the form below. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla -- They're going to Boston both tied and dead tired, which is actually good for the Tampa Bay Rays. Even if the way that they got to both of those points wasn't necessarily something you can call "good."

One night after playing a near perfect game and losing, the Rays played a nearly fatally flawed one and won, outlasting the Red Sox in a marathon of a Game 2 in the American League Championship Series. The game wore on for 11 innings, took five hours and 27 minutes to complete and didn't end until 1:35 in the morning ET. Fourteen pitchers were used, seven from each side. The game featured 24 hits (12 apiece), seven home runs (four from Boston) and was won in the 11th without the aid of a single hit.

Oh. The final score was 9-8, evening the best-of-seven series, 1-1, with Game 3 scheduled for Monday afternoon in Fenway Park.

"It seemed like it took forever," said Tampa Bay reliever Dan Wheeler, "just to get through the fifth inning."

Wheeler was a perfect example for this imperfect game, both a hero and a goat. In the eighth, he came in to coax Kevin Youkilis -- who already had three hits in the game -- into a critical double play. And Wheeler followed that by whipping a wild pitch over the head of catcher Dioner Navarro that tied the score, 8-8.

Then he kept going out and kept going out and kept pitching and kept pitching, finishing with 3 1/3 innings on his ledger and allowing only one hit. He threw 48 pitches, which was more than he had since June of 2006, a stretch of 191 appearances. "What he did tonight is truly spectacular," Rays manager Joe Maddon said.

"Not only did he eat up innings, he threw up zeroes as well," said reliever Grant Balfour.

"He could have gone nine or 10," reliever J.P. Howell said.

The game was won in the 11th when Mike Timlin, the seventh Boston reliever, walked the bases full and gave up a one-out, game-winning sacrifice fly to Rays' centerfielder B.J. Upton. The ball Upton hit to right field was not particularly deep. In fact, it was kind of shallow, along the right-field line. But Fernando Perez easily beat J.D. Drew's throw to the plate. "In a straight-up race," Maddon said of his pinch-runner, "I've got him over Seabiscuit."

As big as the win was for the Rays -- "You're down 2-0 going up there ... that's a little tough," Balfour said afterward -- it was not typical Tampa Bay baseball. Scott Kazmir was, unfortunately for the Rays, typically wild again, throwing 38 first-inning pitches and giving up two runs before the crowd at the Trop had found its seats. In the third, Carl Crawford was picked off of first. Then came some sketchy bullpen work, atypical for the Rays. The last Rays pitcher standing was rookie lefty David Price, who pitched two-thirds of an inning for the win.

Luckily for Tampa Bay -- and, yes, Rays fans, there was some luck involved in this one -- the Sox had their problems, too. Most of them involved Josh Beckett, who was staked to an early lead and gave it up not once, not twice but three times. Boston manager Terry Francona made the almost unconscionable decision to leave Beckett -- who injured an oblique muscle late last month -- in to face Tampa Bay's Evan Longoria in the fifth even though Longoria already had ripped a home run and a double off of the struggling right-hander. Longoria promptly smacked a run-scoring double that enabled the Rays to re-take the lead.

In all, Beckett gave up nine hits and eight runs over 4 1/3 innings, raising a huge question mark as to his availability -- and his effectiveness -- for the rest of the series.

In the 11th, Timlin walked the seven and eight hitters in the Tampa Bay lineup -- Navarro and Ben Zobrist, at the time -- and was forced to intentionally walk leadoff man Akinori Iwamura to load the bases. Timlin had Upton down 0-2 when he popped the game-winning sacrifice to right field.

"It doesn't really matter how you win games now," Longoria said. "We just have to win."

The Rays leave St. Pete ecstatic about getting the win, but the Red Sox leave town with all they could have hoped for -- one win in a place that they've had a whole lot of trouble winning in this year. In Game 3, the Red Sox have their ace going, Jon Lester. "We try not to think about that ...," reliever Howell said of the prospect of facing Lester down 0-2, "but it was definitely in the back of our minds."

Still, after Beckett's blowout, after allowing the Rays to come back and tie the series, after the continuing silence of slugger David Ortiz -- 0-for-6 in this series and just 4-for-23 (.174) this postseason with only one extra-base hit, a double -- the Red Sox have plenty to be concerned about.

The first order of business for both teams, of course, is getting some sleep. Monday afternoon will be here before anyone knows it.