Angels staying alive

B.J. Upton and these Tampa Bay Rays are headed home – to get ready for the American League championship series.

Worst in the majors last year, the Rays will play for a spot in the World Series after finishing off the Chicago White Sox 6-2 Monday in Game 4 of the A.L. playoffs at Chicago.

Ray-markable!

Upton homered twice, Andy Sonnanstine pitched a solid 5 2/3innings and manager Joe Maddon’s surprising Rays won 3-1 in the best-of-five series – their first trip to the postseason. Next up, the Boston Red Sox or the Los Angeles Angels starting Friday.

Angels stay alive

Torii Hunter was ready to relax.

The Angels had just broken an 11-game postseason losing streak to the Red Sox dating back to 1986 and he needed to calm down off after his two mistakes had nudged his team closer to elimination.

“I need to get a massage and rubdown,” Hunter said after 5 hours, 19 minutes of what came close to being the final countdown to the end of his season.

“I was tense. I can feel it in my body. Guys were making pitches and I was jumping around in the outfield like I was in high school.”

Los Angeles won a major-league high 100 games this season, Hunter’s first with the team. Boston nearly ended it in three before the Angels won 5-4 in 12 innings Sunday night.

He and his teammates were smiling after the win cut Boston’s lead in the series to 2-1 – an unusual sight in the locker room of a club that had been 4-14 in playoff games since winning the 2002 World Series.

Hunter did make two costly gaffes.

He said he should have called off second baseman Howie Kendrick on Jacoby Ellsbury’s bloop to short center field in the second that went for the first three-running single in postseason history, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. And he was easily thrown out at second base by left fielder Jason Bay as he tried to stretch his leadoff single in the ninth.

If they didn’t look as dominant as they were in the regular season, the Angels at least showed they could win under pressure in the stadium of a team that had the second best home record in baseball. And the Red Sox started postseason ace Josh Beckett to try to close out the series.

But from his very first pitch, a double by Chone Figgins, Beckett didn’t have it.

He allowed four runs in five innings, his shortest stint in 10 postseason starts, and gave up two homers to Mike Napoli – a two-run shot that tied the game at 3 in the third and a solo drive that made it 4-3 in the fifth. Kevin Youkilis’ RBI double tied it in the fifth.

Napoli began the winning rally with a leadoff single in the 12th off Javier Lopez. Napoli took second on Kendrick’s sacrifice and scored on Erick Aybar’s single.

“I got a good pitch to hit and I was ready to go,” Figgins said of his first at bat. “I wasn’t going to wait around. We had to try something different.”

Beckett said he felt fine physically after his start was pushed back four days from last Wednesday’s opener because of a strain in his side.

“They really made him work,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said. “Right from the very first pitch of the game he was (pitching) out of the stretch.”

Beckett wasn’t the only star who struggled on the mound.

Francisco Rodriguez, who set a major-league record with 62 saves, started the 10th and had the bases loaded with two outs before retiring Jed Lowrie on a routine fly to rightfielder Vladimir Guerrero.

Jered Weaver, who took over in the 11th, completed the first relief outing of his career by holding the Red Sox hitless in the 12th.