Rays outslug Red Sox, 8-5

The Rays had to come up with a couple of counterpunches Wednesday night.

First and most urgently, they had to find a way to wrest momentum back from the Red Sox after an unpalatable loss in Tuesday's series opener. And just when it seemed they had set themselves up to do exactly that by taking an early lead on Josh Beckett, they had to fight back again to reclaim a lead that had trickled away by the time they came to bat in the eighth inning.

Doing their best to remain as unpredictable as possible, the Rays succeeded on both accounts and came away with an 8-5 triumph that brought them back within five games of Boston's wild-card lead.

"We've been through it, and that's the way this thing works," said Manager Joe Maddon. "You just can't quit, you just can't stop, you can't stop grinding, you can't stop pushing, you never know when that moment's going to occur, you never know when you're making a memory."

The Rays' fast and furious response after the disappointment of watching their lead slip away seemed to qualify, at least in the short term. Carlos Peña opened the bottom of the eighth by cracking a double to right-center and scored when Pat Burrell followed with a single in the same direction that drove Ramon Ramirez from the game.

On came Manny Delcarmen for damage control, and Evan Longoria simply unloaded on his opening fastball, bashing it high and deep over the wall in left for a two-run homer that provided the final margin. Dan Wheeler had to come on and close it out in the ninth for J.P. Howell, but the result was what mattered.

"I'm happy that we were able to respond immediately - it says a lot about this ballclub," Peña said. "We could easily have hung our heads ... we didn't do that. We just kept coming."

There was a certain resolve in the Rays' approach in Wednesday's game that wasn't evident the previous evening. It began with a pair of solo homers off Beckett, with Carl Crawford going the other way in the first inning and Burrell opening the second with a drive to left.

But the runs that followed made more of a statement, in that the Rays managed to string together some little things on the way to big results. A successful squeeze bunt from B.J. Upton, for instance, and the RBI double Gregg Zaun hit on the 10th pitch of an epic third-inning duel with Beckett that put the Rays up 5-1.

Of course they understood there was too much game remaining to rest easy there, but it was the Red Sox who seized the momentum and carried it through the middle of the eighth, chipping away with three more runs off Matt Garza before tying the score in the eighth without a hit.

After loading the bases on walks, Howell - the fourth pitcher of the inning - uncorked a wild pitch that was a carbon copy of the one that lost him a game a week earlier in Toronto to make it a 5-5 game.

It would have been easy - perhaps even understandable - for the Rays to fold it up right there.

"That wouldn't be us, man," Howell said. "We can bounce back from things - we just need to make sure we don't have to bounce back too much and just keep it pretty smooth from here on."

They did their part Wednesday, taking what looked as if it was headed for a seven-game deficit for a few moments and turning it back around to a safer five-game hole. Not that the specifics were necessarily on everyone's mind in the heat of the moment.

"I think if you asked everybody in this clubhouse, they'd be like, 'What are you talking about?' Because we don't really do that kind of math," Peña said. "We didn't say, 'If we lose today we'll be seven back.' We never thought that way.

"I like that. I like the fact that we focus on what we're supposed to focus upon instead of start all these horrible imaginings that really don't mean anything for us."

Everything else, though, most certainly means something for the Rays. They understand that after living through last season.

"Everything's big now, every pitch is huge," Burrell said. "We put ourselves in that situation, and you can't be surprised by anything at this point. We have to go for it every time we step on the field. We've got a lot of ground to make up - some of which I think we're capable of doing, and we might need a little help."