Maybe we should have seen this coming.

Maybe we should have believed in the Tampa Bay Rays, this team that came from the ashes this past summer to win the American League East, this team with no tradition and no real fan base and not a lot of payroll, this team that now has the Red Sox down 3-1 in this American League Championship Series.

Maybe we should have seen this coming.

But no one really did.

Not around here anyway.

All summer long, we doubted the Rays, this small-market team in a game where small-market teams usually don’t count, this team full of names that only the most ardent of baseball fans had ever heard of. All summer long, we figured it was just a matter of time before they collapsed, for there was no way in this baseball world the Rays were going to win the A.L. East over the Red Sox, right?

Until of course they did.

Until this team that plays in a domed stadium that used to be infamous for more empty seats than fans, this franchise that was derisively referred to as the “Devil Dogs” instead of the Devil Rays, went from last to first in the A.L. East, one of the biggest turnarounds in baseball history.

For the Red Sox are not only down 3-1, one game away from putting the bats and balls away for the winter, they are on the wrong side of history.

It is the Rays who are the story now, the Rays who have become the ’67 Red Sox, the team that seems to have destiny right there in the lineup, as if after all these years they have suddenly found their moment, their time. It is the Rays that seem locked into the present tense, young and hungry and all about today, while the Red Sox look like yesterday. It is the Rays who are all about youth.

There’s no overestimating this.

They seem to come at the Red Sox in waves, all these young players who are now on baseball’s big stage and loving it. All this young talent was stockpiled, almost in anonymity, courtesy of the fact the Rays were so bad every year they kept getting high draft choices. All this young talent that is using this series as their coming out party.

There is such an unvarnished quality to all of them, almost a freshness. Evan Longoria, the rookie who seems to have stepped off the pages of adolescent fiction. The great athleticism of Carl Crawford. The talent of B.J. Upton. A deep pitching staff that keeps coming at the Red Sox, one after another. A young team with everything all ahead of them, playing like they believe that, even in baseball, youth invariably will be served.

Then there’s the Red Sox, a team that looks tired, beaten down.

“It’s a little shocking,” backup catcher Kevin Cash said.

Yes, it is.

Maybe it’s inevitable, the result of too many injuries.

Josh Beckett, last year’s playoff pitching star, who spent time on the disabled list and went into the playoffs with an oblique muscle strain, was chased in Game Two. David Ortiz, ol’ Big Papi himself, is nowhere near what he’s been in past playoffs, as though he’s never really come back from a midseason wrist injury. Jason Varitek, the Sox captain, has all but become an automatic out at the plate. J.D. Drew has been bothered by a herniated disk. Mike Lowell, last year’s playoff star, is out for the year and already scheduled for hip surgery.

This is a team that’s supposed to come back from 3-1 and beat the Rays and go to the World Series?

This is a team that seems more suited for the offseason.

So much of playoff baseball is timing. Who is peaking at the right time, and who isn’t. Who has momentum, and who doesn’t. The Red Sox had it coming out of the Angels series, but in the last two games their momentum seems as gone as September.

And it would be one thing if the last two games had taken place in Florida. They did not. They happened here, in Fenway Park, where the Red Sox are so hard to beat. In Fenway Park, which has been the Sox’ field of dreams for so long now. But the Rays are up 3-1 and it already feels funereal around here, the sense that the eulogy for this season is already being prepared, that this season is already in the coffin and all we need now is for it to be placed in the ground and covered in dirt.

But this is sports, with its unpredictability. We saw that in 2004 when the Sox came back from being down 3-0 to beat the Yankees in the ALCS and go on to win their first World Series in 86 years. We saw it last year, when they were down 3-1 to the Indians and came back to win. Baseball history tells us that no one should be shocked if the Sox win tonight, and then throw Beckett and Jon Lester at the Rays over the weekend and survive this.

“We’ve been here before,” said Dustin Pedroia.

Yes, they have.

But how many times can you crawl along the edge of the abyss until the abyss gobbles you up?

That’s now the question.

And there’s the sinking feeling that the Rays are both young enough, and confident enough, to believe they can beat the Red Sox, that this is their moment, their time.

The sense that the Red Sox no longer are the lovable underdogs, the way they were in 2004.

The sense that they are the glamour team with the big payroll down to the upstart Rays, this team that’s come out of nowhere.

The sense that they now find themselves on the wrong side of baseball history.ALCS, Game Five

Game time: 8:07 tonight

On TV: TBS

On radio: 103.7 FM (WEEI)

breynold@projo.com