The 22-year-old third baseman noted there's still time to pull out of the slide.

"We're definitely not playing the best baseball that we can as a club right now. The offense is having struggles, but we're still in ball games, and that's the big thing," Longoria said.

"We have so many weapons. And even when everything isn't going right for us, we're still in the game. We've still got a lot of life left in us."

Longoria struck out twice before he narrowly missed hitting a two-run homer that would have put Tampa Bay ahead 3-2 in the sixth.

Instead, the ball stalled in the wind, left fielder Pat Burrell made the catch, and Philly fans mocked Longoria even more with references to the "Desperate Housewives" star, who is not related to the ballplayer.

"I've never seen anything like that before. I really was just jogging out of the box to see if the ball was going to stay fair," Longoria said. "In my mind I thought for sure it was going out. I started rounding first and saw him camped under the ball, and I was just stunned."

Longoria homered six times and drove in 11 runs in the first two rounds of the playoffs, however he's 0-for-12 through the first three games of the World Series.

Although he drove in a run with a groundout in Tampa Bay's victory in Game 2, he's contributed little with his bat since homering against Boston in Games 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the AL championship series.

But Longoria is not alone. He, Carlos Pena and Carl Crawford were 1-for-23 entering Game 3. And while Crawford went 2-for-4 Saturday night, Pena fanned twice to finish 0-for-3 with a walk and is 0-for-10 in the World Series.

"I'm surprised," Crawford said of the numbers for Tampa Bay's No. 3 and 4 hitters. "But we've been facing some good hitting. And, everybody knows that good pitching stops good hitting any day."

Much was made before the game about how the Rays might react to Philadelphia fans who are notoriously tough on opposing teams. But manager Joe Maddon insisted that wasn't a concern because of the way his young team has handled other hostile environments, including Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium.

A bigger issue in his estimation was whether his hitters would have the patience necessary to be successful against Jamie Moyer, the Phillies' 45-year-old starting pitcher who entices batters to swing at pitches out of the strike zone.

For the most part, they didn't.

Moyer fanned Longoria twice and struck out Pena once, holding the Rays in check until the seventh inning when Crawford singled and Dioner Navarro doubled for just the fourth and fifth hits off the Philadelphia starter.

With the sluggers struggling, the Rays played small ball to overcome a 4-1 deficit. Crawford and Navarro scored on groundouts, then B.J. Upton tied it 4-all in the eighth when he reached on infield single and stole second and third before scoring on catcher Carlos Ruiz's throwing error.

Upton is confident Longoria, Pena and the rest of the Rays will be OK.

"Nobody's pressing. We knew it was going to be like this, a lot of tight games," Upton said. "They're a lot like us. They do a lot of the same things. It's two pretty evenly matched teams."

Longoria also found himself in a position to make an impact at the end, defensively. But he was unable to get to Ruiz's slow roller up the third base line that drove in the winning run after the Phillies loaded the bases on a hit batsman and a pair of intentional walks in the ninth.

Maddon adjusted the defense, bringing Ben Zobrist in from right field and positioning him as a fifth infielder.

But Ruiz's winning single was placed perfectly and only rolled about 45 feet.

"It really was good fortune on their part," Longoria said. "He couldn't have picked up the ball and rolled it to a better spot. If he hits it a little harder, we have a chance to get a double play. ... It was just one of those nights."