Evan Longoria lifts Rays over Rangers, 5-2

Reporting from Arlington, Texas

Evan Longoria admitted his left quadriceps still bothered him.

“I felt like Kirk Gibson a little bit,” said Longoria, referring to the hobbled Gibson’s dramatic pinch-hit home run in 1988 that sparked the Dodgers to a World Series victory.

But after Longoria hit two doubles and a two-run homer Sunday, the Tampa Bay Rays are on the verge of a stirring comeback. Their 5-2 victory over the Texas Rangers forced a fifth and deciding game Tuesday in the American League division series.

The Rays need one more victory to become the first team to lose the first two games at home but win a best-of-five ALDS series since the New York Yankees did it against the Oakland Athletics in 2001.

To achieve this distinction, the Rays will have to solve Rangers ace Cliff Lee, who pitched seven innings of one-run ball in a Game 1 victory Wednesday over David Price.

“We know what’s at stake,” Texas third baseman Michael Young said after the Rangers blew two chances at home to win the ALDS and advance to the AL championship series against the Yankees.

Longoria, who missed the final 10 games of the regular season because of his injury, was hitless in 11 at-bats before leading off the fourth with a double that started a two-run rally. Longoria didn’t have to strain his leg in the fifth after hitting a two-run home run, his seventh career postseason homer.

The Rays’ ALDS comeback is similar to the resilience they displayed in a four-game series at New York from Sept. 20-23, when they lost the first two games to fall 2 1/2 games out of first but won the final two games and eventually won the AL East and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.

“That was pretty fresh in a lot of guys’ minds, and that’s what I kept drawing from -- our ability to bounce back in that situation and our ability to do that here and the belief that we can,” Longoria said.

Texas is still the only current major league franchise that has never won a postseason series, and it still has not won a playoff game in front of its home fans (0-6).

“It’s down to one game; we’ve got Cliff going and certainly feel good about that,” Rangers Manager Ron Washington said. “We have proved that we can win there.”

Tampa Bay sends 19-game winner Price to the mound Tuesday night in a rematch of the Game 1 starters.

“I like our chances with Dave on the mound again,” Longoria said.

After batting .125 (eight for 64) with one run in the first two games, and going 16 innings without scoring in one stretch, the Rays were five outs from elimination before their bats finally came alive late in Game 3. And the positive trend carried over to Sunday, when they had 12 hits.

Before the series against Tampa Bay, the Rangers had played only the Yankees in the playoffs. Texas won its first-ever playoff game in 1996, but New York then won three straight that season and swept best-of-five series in 1998 and 1999.

Now Texas will be depending on Lee, acquired July 9 from the Seattle Mariners for these kinds of situations, to earn a chance to play New York again in the postseason.

“It’s been an unusual series so far,” Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler said. “We won two games at their place and they won two games at ours. That’s the way it stands and we hope it doesn’t change.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.