ANAHEIM, Calif. - When Red Sox ace Josh Beckett blew away the Los Angeles Angels in Game 1 of their AL playoff series, Curt Schilling considered it a challenge.

And when his turn came around, he met it.

Schilling pitched seven shutout innings on Sunday, and David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez hit back-to-back homers to lead Boston to a 9-1 victory, completing a three-game sweep of the Angels. The Red Sox will play in the AL championship series against either the Yankees or the Cleveland Indians, who lead New York 2-1 in their best-of-five series.

“Pitching is everything, and our guys were pitching,” Ramirez said. “Schilling’s the man. He’s got a lot of spirit, he knows what he’s doing out there and he came through for us.”

Making his first postseason start since his bloody sock victory in the 2004 World Series — and his first start of any kind in 12 days — Schilling scattered six hits while walking one, striking out four and throwing 76 of his 100 pitches for strikes.

Even at 40 and lacking the fastball he once lived by, Schilling still thrives under pressure. In 16 playoff starts, he is 9-2 with a 1.93 ERA.

“His style has changed, but the results in the postseason remain the same. That’s a real tribute to him,” Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein said. “That’s what makes him special.”

The Red Sox have won nine consecutive playoff games against the Angels, going back to the 1986 playoffs, when Boston rallied from a 3-1 deficit to reach the World Series. This year, Los Angeles hit .192 as a team in the series and scored a mere four runs in three games.

Beckett pitched a four-hit shutout in the first game, Boston’s bullpen rescued Daisuke Matsuzaka in Game 2 with 4 1-3 innings of no-hit relief, and Schilling shut out Los Angeles for seven innings on Sunday.

“It’s nice to be a part of something like this,” Beckett said. “They’re a good team, but they’ve been hit by some injuries. Garret Anderson basically had to come out of the game today because he couldn’t see. It’s tough to deal with those kind of things, and I guess we took advantage of it.”

Anderson left the game because the lingering effects of conjunctivitis left him unable to see the ball. The Angels were already without Gary Matthews Jr., who was left off the playoff roster with a sprained left ankle and right knee. Casey Kotchman was a late scratch from the lineup with an undisclosed injury.

“This series wasn’t lost on injuries,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “It’s part of any season, guys are going to get hurt. We got hit by some of ours at the wrong time. ... They’re not going to let us call them in a month or now when everybody is healthy and say, ‘Hey, let’s play this series again.’ They beat us. It wasn’t because of our health. Those guys went out there and beat us, and that’s the bottom line.”

Ortiz and Ramirez were a big reason why.

The Red Sox sluggers homered off Jered Weaver to break a scoreless tie in the fourth inning — the first time this season the pair has homered consecutively.

“We’ll take it now,” Epstein said. “It’s the most important time of the year to have them both going hot at the same time. The complexion of our club really changes when you can’t pitch around either one of them.”

The Angels walked Ortiz four times in Game 2 on Friday night, only to see Ramirez win it on a three-run homer with two outs in the ninth. Unable to safely pitch around Ortiz in the finale, the Angels challenged him — and paid for it.

“Hopefully, we’re going to see it for three more weeks,” third baseman Mike Lowell said. “Those two guys are special. We lean on them, and they come through for us.”

Ortiz’s homer was his second of the series and the ninth of his postseason career, a Red Sox franchise record. Ramirez’s shot was his second of this postseason and his 22nd career playoff homer, tying Bernie Williams for the all-time record.

Ramirez has struggled through injuries this year to the worst full-season numbers of his career: hitting 20 homers and 88 RBIs to go with a .296 average — far from the production that made him a $20 million man.

Ortiz played through knee and shoulder injuries that cut into his power numbers — 35 homers and 117 RBIs — though he was fifth in league in hitting and he led the AL in on-base percentage by a wide margin.

“Pick your poison,” Schilling said. “When they’re both on, I don’t know if there is a way to get both of them out.”

The homers gave Boston a 2-0 lead, and it stayed that way until the bottom of the seventh. Maicer Izturis doubled, but Schilling got Howie Kendrick on a grounder to second and Juan Rivera on a popup to first, then struck out Mike Napoli to end the inning.

Schilling pumped his arm before walking off the field to be congratulated by his teammates.

“I think if you saw the way I reacted to it, you know how important I thought it was,” he said. “There were a couple of points in this game where I felt like the game was on the line, and that was absolutely one of them.”

But in the next half-inning, the Red Sox pounded out seven more runs to ice the game. The Angels avoided their second shutout of the series against Eric Gagne in the ninth when Izturis doubled and later scored on Kendrick’s sacrifice fly.