"It seemed like he was down to his final at-bat as a Ray. His team was five outs from elimination. What chance did he have, really? They were going to go quietly in the night.

Now the Rays are alive in this division series.

And Carlos Pena is back from the dead.

"I'm very grateful to live in this moment tonight, to come through," Pena said.

The man with the lowest batting average this season among all major-league qualifiers, who batted just .111 in September, grabbed hold of a couple of fastballs and some old magic Saturday night for two hits in as many innings. And so now there are more innings to play today.

Pena's first was a line single to right field to tie the Texas Rangers at 2 in the eighth inning. His second cleared the fence in the ninth for two runs to pad a 6-3 Rays victory at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.

"There are those times as an athlete everything gets quiet, simplified," Pena said. "Just the moment - so quiet."

There were others who came through in this game, like rookie catcher John Jaso, whose RBI single after Pena's eighth-inning hit gave the Rays their first lead of this series, 3-2. But this was senior night, and Rays seniors, refusing to make this their last game, came through large.

There was Carl Crawford, who had two hits, including a homer, and who made a lunging catch in the seventh and then a sliding grab of a Josh Hamilton sinking liner to end the eighth."