The Milwaukee Brewers were three outs away from their first World Series title. Then the Tampa Bay Rays pulled off one of the wildest escapes in Fall Classic history.
Facing a sweep at Tropicana Field on Tuesday night, the Rays rallied for two runs in the bottom of the 12th inning, capped by pinch-hitter Ben Williamson’s walk-off single, to beat the Brewers 4-3 in Game 4. Milwaukee still leads the series 3-1, but there will be a Game 5. Here is how it happened, according to MLB.com and the Baseball-Reference box score.
A back-and-forth nine innings
Tampa Bay struck first in the second inning when Chandler Simpson doubled in a run. Milwaukee answered in the fourth on a Cooper Pratt RBI double, but the Rays went back in front in the bottom half when Junior Caminero scored after Brewers third baseman David Hamilton missed a tag and then threw wildly to first.
Hamilton made up for it in the fifth with a solo home run that tied the game 2-2. From there, both bullpens took over and nobody scored for a long time.
The defense was spectacular on both sides. Rays outfielder Jonny DeLuca made a leaping catch and a diving catch, Simpson added a leaping grab of his own, and Brewers second baseman Brice Turang turned a slick double play. Rays catcher Liam Hicks also threw out Pratt on a call that was overturned on review.
Milwaukee reliever Aaron Ashby kept the Rays off the board in the ninth to send the game to extra innings, and MLB noted he became the only pitcher in postseason history to record five or more outs in six or more straight appearances without allowing a run in any of them.
The 12th inning
The game finally broke open in the 12th. Pratt, Milwaukee’s rookie shortstop, hit a solo homer off Rays reliever Ian Seymour to give the Brewers a 3-2 lead, and the many Brewers fans in the building erupted. Jackson Chourio followed with a double that made more history: his 10 hits through the first four games tied Babe Ruth’s 1928 mark for the most in the first four games of a World Series.
Seymour kept the damage to one run. In the bottom half, a rare Milwaukee error helped the Rays get going, and DeLuca tied the game with a single. With the bases loaded, Williamson, who had fouled a ball off his own face a day earlier, chopped a ball over the right side of the infield to score the winning run off Shane Drohan.
The game lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes in front of 40,514 fans. Seymour earned the win and Drohan took the loss.
The quotes
“We’ve got one more day,” Seymour said afterward. “Now let’s make it two more days.”
“Tonight,” Williamson said, “good things happened.”
Brewers captain Christian Yelich kept it in perspective: “If you want to win a championship, you’re supposed to survive some hard things. It’s supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to test you.”
By the numbers
- 1910: The last time a team facing a World Series sweep won with a walk-off, according to MLB.com. That was the Chicago Cubs.
- 8: Milwaukee’s postseason winning streak that was snapped, one short of the record.
- 11th: The Rays are the 11th team in a best-of-seven series to come back from 0-3 to force a Game 5. No team has ever forced a Game 6 from 0-3 in the World Series.
How we got here
The Brewers won Game 1 3-2 and Game 2 5-4 in Milwaukee, then routed the Rays 10-1 in Game 3 in St. Petersburg. A win in Game 4 would have made them the first team to sweep both a best-of-seven League Championship Series and the World Series in the same postseason.
What’s next
Game 5 is back at Tropicana Field. Milwaukee needs one more win to claim the first championship in franchise history, while Tampa Bay needs three straight to win its first title. Whoever wins, this World Series is guaranteed to crown a first-time champion.
The bottom line
The Brewers remain in control, but the Rays bought themselves at least one more night with a comeback for the history books. After a game like that, nobody in St. Petersburg is ready to call this series over.
Image: Tropicana Field Opening Day 2002 by TSGT Douglas K. Lingefelt, USAF via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Mark 1.0
