Red Sox sting Rays to stay atop divison

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - David Ortiz hit his AL-leading 45th and 46th homers and drove in four runs Tuesday night to help Curt Schilling and the Boston Red Sox hang on to first place in the AL East with a 15-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.\nManny Ramirez also homered twice to drive in three runs and join Ortiz, Trot Nixon and Jason Varitek with four hits for the Red Sox, who remained one-half game in front of the New York Yankees, who beat Baltimore 12-9.\nNixon homered and drove in three runs, and Varitek had two RBIs as Boston rebounded from Monday night's 8-7 loss to the last-place Devil Rays, a setback that left the Red Sox clinging to their thinnest lead in the division in two months.\nBoston finished with 21 hits and tied an AL record with four players with four apiece. The Red Sox are the first team to accomplish the feat since Minnesota did it against Cleveland on June 24, 2002.\nOrtiz hit two-run homers off Seth McClung (6-11) in the first and third innings, giving him home runs in three straight at-bats over two games and his second consecutive four-RBI game against the Devil Rays.\nThe Boston slugger boosted his major league-leading RBI total to 140 and is batting .447 with eight homers, 18 RBIs and 13 runs scored during a 10-game hitting streak. His 46 homers are a club season record for a left-handed batter and tie Jim Rice for the second-most hit by a Red Sox in one year.\nRamirez followed Ortiz's first-inning shot with his 37th homer. Nixon's two-run blast off McClung finished a four-run third. McClung allowed seven runs and seven hits in two-plus innings.\nSchilling (7-8) allowed two runs and six hits, struck out seven and walked one in seven innings to improve to 2-3 in six starts since returning to the rotation on Aug. 25. The six-time All-Star gave up a solo homer to Jorge Cantu in the first and watched the speedy Carl Crawford score from second base on Cantu's sacrifice fly to deep center in the third.\nOrtiz singled in the fourth and fifth, giving him hits in six consecutive at-bats. He grounded out in his last-bat to snap the streak.\nHe scored on Nixon's RBI single in the fourth and again in the fifth when Ramirez homered off Joe Beimel for his third multihomer game of the season and 42nd of his career.\nOrtiz has nine multihomer games, one shy of the Red Sox record set by Jimmie Foxx in 1938. He has 10 homers in 18 games against Tampa Bay this season, while Ramirez has homered seven times against the Devil Rays.