BOSTON (AP) ― Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon spends most of his time giving signs.

On Thursday night, he went searching for one.

“You’re always looking for signs, man. You’re looking for signs from the baseball heaven and the baseball gods,” he said after the Rays followed a fluke play with a three-run homer and beat the Boston Red Sox 9-2 to cut their deficit in the AL wild-card race to three games. “They’ve got to throw you signs once in a while. They’ve got to give you something to further the belief.”

Evan Longoria hit a three-run homer and B.J. Upton and Casey Kotchman each hit two-run shots for Tampa Bay, which had trailed the Red Sox by nine games in the wild-card race on Sept. 3. But it was Upton’s broken-bat RBI single that broke a scoreless tie and convinced the Rays that luck could be on their side.

With two on and two out in the third, Upton hit what would ordinarily be an inning-ending grounder toward shortstop Marco Scutaro. But the barrel of his bat arrived at the same time as the ball, and when Scutaro jumped to avoid the pointy shard he allowed the ball to go through his legs.

“Believe me, when I saw that I thought, ‘Hey, let’s see what’s going to happen for the rest of the game,’” Maddon said. “And then the home run followed it right up.”

The Red Sox dropped to 3-11 in September to fall from first place in the division to 4½ games behind the New York Yankees and into a race with the once-dismissed Rays for the wild-card. Boston and Tampa Bay play three more times at Fenway Park this weekend.

“I think enough things haven’t gone our way, so I’ll take it,” Upton said. “We got one, and then Longo came behind me and we got a couple more.”

Athletics 6, Tigers 1

Pirates 6, Dodgers 2

Reds 8, Cubs 6

Rangers 7, Indians 4

Phillies 3, Marlins 1 (Game 1)

Phillies 2, Marlins 1 (Game 2)

Royals 7, White Sox 2

Giants 8, Rockies 5

Natioanls 10, Mets 1