Now the Tampa Bay Rays are down to their last chance.

Two days after blowing a seven-run lead in an 8-7 loss at Boston, Tampa Bay dropped a 4-2 decision at Tropicana Field in the AL championship series on Saturday night.

"We would have liked to finish it out tonight," Rays reliever Grant Balfour said. "It didn't happen. We're staying loose. We're not getting too uptight about it. It's come to the last game now. That's what baseball is all about."

The Red Sox evened the series and forced a Game 7 for Sunday night. Matt Garza will face Boston's Jon Lester, with the winner advancing to the World Series to play the Philadelphia Phillies.

"It's going to be fun," Tampa Bay third baseman Evan Longoria said. "In my opinion, there's going to be less pressure on everybody because it's do-or-die. You can go out there and have fun. Throw it out there and do what you can do. I think there was a little added pressure on us going up 3-1 to kind of end it."

Tampa Bay was on the brink of its first pennant Thursday night, but nothing has gone right for the Rays since they took 7-0 lead in the seventh inning of Game 5 at Fenway Park.

Boston battered the Rays' bullpen for eight runs and won it in the ninth on J.D. Drew's RBI single, sending the series back to Florida.

Manager Joe Maddon was confident the Rays would be able to put the loss behind them. They also were headed back to their quirky field, where they compiled the best home record in baseball this season.

A sellout crowd of 40,947 packed "The Pit" for Game 6, and Tampa Bay fell short again. B.J. Upton hit his seventh postseason homer in the first and Jason Bartlett went deep in the fifth but that was it for the Rays.

Boston earned its ninth straight win when facing elimination in the ALCS.

"You just have to stay positive," Rays starting pitcher James Shields said. "We've got one more game. We're going to find out that we're all about."

Maddon has seen this script before. He was a minor league manager in the Angels organization in 1986 and watched from the stands with his team up 3-1 in the ALCS over Boston, and one strike away from taking Game 5. Dave Henderson then homered and the Red Sox won in extra innings en route to three straight wins and a trip to the World Series.

Now Maddon and the Rays are down to their last chance to prevent a similar comeback.

"It's all about how we react to the moment, and it's a seventh game," Maddon said. "It's a great learning experience. For us to win that game would be something special for us, also. So it's not about looking into the past. It's about looking into the future right now. We've got to get ready to play that game tomorrow."