BOSTON | Fenway Park was silent.</p><p>From the old bleachers high above the field, you could faintly hear another celebration from a Tampa Bay Rays team morphing baseball&#8217;s worst franchise into one of its best. But those screams were muffled up here, drowned out by the quiet of what remained from a stunned fan base on edge for the first time this postseason.</p><p>Tampa Bay clobbered four home runs over the Green Monster and got the shutdown pitching performance expected from the other side in a 9-1 win over the Red Sox, taking a 2-1 lead in this best-of-seven AL Championship Series on Monday.</p><p>&#8220;Nobody thought we could come in here and win,&#8221; Rays outfielder B.J. Upton said.</p><p>&#8220;Especially the way we did it. There&#8217;s no pressure on us.&#8221;</p><p>It was a flat performance by the defending champions when you least expected it &#8212; at home for the first time, with their ace Jon Lester pitching where he&#8217;s at his best. Of the 27 previous times a team has taken a 2-1 lead in the ALCS, it&#8217;s gone on to win 20.</p><p>The Red Sox have climbed from more daunting deficits than this, but at least until tonight&#8217;s game four, it&#8217;s the Rays who have the chance of finding out how they deal with postseason success.</p><p>&#8220;(Tonight) and the days after are a whole new chapter in this book we&#8217;re trying to write,&#8221; Rays reliever J.P. Howell said.</p><p>Their attack came small, at first, with a run on a passed ball before they swung hard and often at Lester, who hadn&#8217;t surrendered an earned run since the regular season.</p><p>A single by Jason Bartlett, then a double off the Monster by Akinori Iwamura, then the big shot, a no-doubt home run from Upton that landed in the parking lot behind the left-field wall. Two batters later Evan Longoria homered into the second row of seats behind the Monster.</p><p>Those were the first earned runs scored on Lester in 16 innings, and the first off him in the playoffs since his postseason debut last year &#8212; 24 2/3 innings before. Boston hadn&#8217;t lost one of Lester&#8217;s starts at Fenway since April.</p><p>&#8220;I said yesterday you have to stay away from the big inning against this team,&#8221; Lester said. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t do that.&#8221;</p><p>If there was any doubt, Rocco Baldelli homered off an ad board behind the Green Monster and Carlos Pe&#241;a hit one behind a light tower against relief pitchers. These weren&#8217;t cheap homers. None of them.</p><p>&#8220;They&#8217;re not expecting that to happen, and neither are you,&#8221; Rays manager Joe Maddon said. &#8220;Nobody was.&#8221;</p><p>On the other side, the volatile Matt Garza squashed the Red Sox, allowing just one run in six-plus innings. Garza describes himself as a work in progress in dealing with his emotions, and he took a significant step in establishing himself as a big-league pitcher.</p><p>Garza, who had a confrontation with catcher Dioner Navarro earlier this season, has taken to writing the names of his children on the underside of his hat. When he feels himself losing his cool, he&#8217;ll step off the mound, look at those names and take a reminder to calm down.</p><p>There sure wasn&#8217;t much to calm on Monday. The Red Sox put runners on second base in the first two innings but couldn&#8217;t make it count, and then nothing of consequence until the seventh, when a walk to Jason Varitek and a single by Alex Cora knocked Garza out of the game.</p><p>&#8220;I told myself,&#8221; Garza said, &#8220;&#8216;Let them keep knocking on that door, keep knocking on that wall, but they ain&#8217;t coming home.&#8217; I told myself that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m going to do. I had to make big pitches.&#8221;