It was a blow-by-blow account

Six homers add up in battering

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - When the fastball left Scott Kazmir's left hand, he could assume, at least, that it would stay in the yard. David Ortiz stood at home plate, and lefties - even one such as Ortiz - stand scant chance against Kazmir. He had allowed just 10 home runs to lefty batters in five years, not once this season, and Ortiz was batting .189 against Kazmir.

But then Ortiz whipped his bat, posed in the batter's box, and slowly trotted around the base paths, an omen for the 13-5 Red Sox victory to come. No matter what Kazmir threw and no matter whom he threw it to, his pitch might be launched.

Six Red Sox -Ortiz, Kevin Youkilis, Jason Bay, Mike Lowell, Jason Varitek, and Jacoby Ellsbury - hit one home run, the second time this season six players from one team went deep in the same game. (The Cincinnati Reds did it July 10.) The Reds have twice hit seven home runs in a game this season, May 5 and July 10. Only five teams had previously hit six homers in a game this season.

The Sox had not hit six home runs in a game since Aug. 3, 2003, against the Baltimore Orioles. (Ortiz clocked two that day, and was joined by Johnny Damon, Trot Nixon, Bill Mueller, and Doug Mirabelli.) The Sox crushed three homers in the fourth inning, part of a seven-run explosion. The six homers traveled a combined 2,395 feet, ranging from Varitek's 417-foot blast to left to Ortiz's 387-foot blow to right.

Nights like this are rare, so "you savor it," Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan said. But you also realize you need some help, that it takes an ample supply of fat pitches for so many balls to fly out of the park.

"He got some pitches up," Magadan said.

Kazmir fluctuated between erratic and utterly hittable, and the Sox took full advantage. Kazmir recorded nine outs and allowed four home runs. Mitch Talbot, making his major league debut, yielded a home run to the third batter he faced, a two-run shot by Youkilis in the fourth.

Bay walloped the night's most adventurous dinger. Leading off the fourth, Bay crushed a high fastball from Kazmir to dead center field. Fernando Perez drifted back, his heels at the 404-mark on the wall, and looked to the ceiling. Perez turned up his palms and stared. The ball had disappeared.

"I didn't see it come down," Francona said.

It lodged in the "C-Ring" catwalk 100 feet above the field, an automatic home run by Tropicana Field ground rules. The clout, in such a high-stakes game, raised a prospect that before this season would have been unthinkable: What if a weird bounce off of a catwalk determines a playoff or World Series game?

As for last night, though, it was moot. "That ball," Lowell said, "was crushed anyway."

If Bay's was the oddest, Ortiz's was the most important. First, it staked the Sox to a 3-0 lead before the Rays recorded an out. Second, it came as a sign that Ortiz may be righting himself. Ortiz had not hit a home run in 29 at-bats, a stretch that came on the heels of the longest homerless streak of his career. In the meantime, though, he laced three doubles, and he roped another last night.

"He's putting better swings on balls," Magadan said. "His pitch selection is better. We're trying to keep him short and compact. Just doing that, he's putting better swings on the ball. He doesn't have to take his stride quite as early. When his swing gets a little bit longer, he tends to swing at a lot of pitches out of the zone. That's not him."

Adam Kilgore can be reached at akilgore@globe.com