Red Sox stumble through Ortiz power outage

JEFF BLAIR From Wednesday's Globe and Mail So far, the Tampa Bay Rays are still treating slugger David Ortiz like some kind of ticking explosive device. They tread softly around him, looking for tripwires. "I just told myself: Attack this guy, don't give him anything that you would want to hit," said Matt Garza, the 24-year-old right-hander who started and won Game 3 of the American League Championship Series on Monday. "I just kept going away, going away, and made him kind of expand the strike zone. "But you can never doubt that guy," Garza added quickly. "He's proven himself year in, year out. No matter how much he struggles, it can always be that night that he comes out of the slump." It just took one home loss — a gruesome, 9-1 knockout-punch-laden thumping — for all the worries that had been bubbling below to break the... [read full story]