BOSTON — By the sixth inning of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series on Sunday night, exasperation gave way to desperation: the Red Sox needed to get a hit.
The fans at Fenway Park begged for it, in disbelief that their team's league-leading offense had turned so feeble. The Red Sox had gone 14 innings with only one measly single — in the ninth inning of Game 1 — and it was if they were scrambling up a downstairs escalator, gaining no traction, sinking deeper into a postseason hole.
When the Red Sox got their first hit, by Shane Victorino in the sixth inning, they already trailed the Detroit Tigers by five runs. The manual scoreboard on the Green Moster displayed a glaring field of zeros.
But the scoreboard also offered solace — there were innings to play.
The Red Sox slugger David Ortiz helped them forget their struggles with a game-tying grand slam off closer Joaquin Benoit with two outs in the eighth. And catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia sealed the late-game comeback with a run-scoring single in the ninth to win, 6-5, and even the series at a game apiece.
"You just need a little kindling to start a big fire," Jonny Gomes said of Victorino's two-out single in the sixth.
Boston had the top offense in the A.L. during the regular season, averaging more than 5.2 runs per game, with a powerful core and athleticism at the edges, a multifaceted daily assault. For the first 16 innings of this series, none of that was evident.
But after Max Scherzer flummoxed them for seven innings, with 13 strikeouts, the Red Sox finally showed life against the Detroit bullpen in the eighth. They loaded the bases with two outs for Ortiz. Tigers Manager Jim Leyland brought in Benoit, sensing the threat. But Ortiz did not wait for Benoit to get settled. He laced the first pitch to right.
Right fielder Torii Hunter, a nine-time Gold Glove winner, seemed to have a bead on the ball, raised his arm and leapt to make the catch. But he ran out of room and went toppling violently over the three-foot wall in right, bringing the Detroit training staff scrambling out there. The ball ended up in the bullpen.
Hunter remained in the game, which was now tied. Ortiz, a clutch figure throughout his career in Boston, gave the fans a curtain call. Now they had something to cheer about.
The Tigers had been two innings from a two-games-to-none lead, carried by an almost unfathomable string of pitching excellence. They became the first team to have a no-hitter through the first five innings of three consecutive postseason games, including Justin Verlander's effort in Game 5 of their division series against Oakland.
In what is considered an era of the strikeout, the Tigers set a record for untouchability this season, mowing down 1,428 hitters as a collective pitching staff, an average of nearly nine per game. They became the third team to feature three pitchers with 200 strikeouts.
One of them was Anibal Sanchez, who struck out 12 Boston hitters in a Game 1 gem on Saturday. Another was Verlander, the former most valuable player who is slated to start Game 3.
The third was Scherzer, who lived up to his billing as a 21-game winner this season. Unlike Sanchez, who walked six batters in six innings the previous night, Scherzer made the Red Sox swing their bats. And most of the time, they missed.
After the second inning, with their 21st strikeout in 11 innings, the Red Sox had gone down more times than they had in either the 2004 or the 2007 World Series (20).
"Scherzer tonight was outstanding," Ortiz said. "He had everything going. But these guys never give in."
Before the game, Red Sox Manager John Farrell had said his team's approach would not change, despite its demoralizing 1-0 loss on Saturday.
"It's not about putting additional pressure on ourselves," Farrell said before the game. "It's about being the team that we've been throughout the course of the year. And that's been a strong ability to put yesterday and leave it there."
But the offensive ineptitude lingered like a hangover. The Red Sox struck out eight times in the first four innings, with no batter reaching beyond first.
The Tigers took a lead in the second, after consecutive hits by Victor Martinez, Jhonny Peralta and Alex Avila. The struggles by starter Clay Buchholz continued in the sixth, when he hung a high 1-0 changeup to Miguel Cabrera, who homered over the Green Monster in left.
Consecutive doubles by Prince Fielder and Martinez gave the Tigers a 3-0 lead, and then Alex Avila drilled the first pitch over the bullpen in right, supplying a five-run cushion. With all that offense, it seemed as if Detroit was just showing off.
Finally, with two outs in the sixth, Victorino slipped a 1-2 fastball into left field, eliciting a boisterous ovation from the crowd. The next batter, Dustin Pedroia, attacked a 1-0 pitch with vitriol, roping it high off the left-field wall to drive home Victorino.
It did not seem like much, but it kick-started the Red Sox back to life. In the ninth, Gomes reached on an infield single and advanced to second on an error on the throw. After a wild pitch moved Gomes to third, Saltalamacchia drove him home on a single to left field.
The Red Sox finished with five hits in the final two innings. The floodgates were opened.
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