ST. PETERSBURG -- For once, the ball bounced their way.
It bounced through the right-hand side. Into the outfield. Into the safety of artificial turf and fair terrain. And perhaps, if these Tampa Bay Rays can somehow build off one of the wildest extra innings October has ever seen, into history.
The Rays are not out of the woods, because they’ve played themselves into the most tangled of brush. But in their thrilling, cinematic 4-3 victory in a 12-inning Game 4 of the World Series against the Brewers on Tuesday night at Tropicana Field, they also survived a brush with death.
“We’ve got one more day,” reliever Ian Seymour said after the four-hour, 20-minute affair. “Now let’s make it two more days.”
It was Seymour who allowed the solo swat from Brewers rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt in the top of the 12th that elicited an eruption from the thousands of Brewer backers in attendance at The Trop. That blast threatened to put Milwaukee into a special place in history not just as the first Brewers team to win it all but the first team to sweep both a best-of-seven LCS and World Series.
Instead, Seymour stopped the Brewers from breaking it open. Then a rare error from the Milwaukee defense. Then a series of singles and sends, all culminating with pinch-hitter Ben Williamson bouncing that “Baltimore chop” (from a guy born in Fairfax, Va., not far from Baltimore) into right field for the game-winning RBI that turned The Trop upside down.
“Walking on Sunshine” blared on the speakers for a Rays team that somehow escaped the darkness.
Just a day earlier, Williamson had fouled a ball off his face, a perfectly painful representation of how this Fall Classic had been going for the Rays.
Now, they punched back.
“Tonight,” Williamson said, “good things happened.”
Rare things happened, too.
There had been 16 previous walk-off wins in World Series history by a team facing elimination. Actually, 13 of them had been in extra innings and four had been in the 12th inning or later like this one.
But the only previous team to do it when facing a sweep, like these Rays, was the 1910 Cubs.
So while both of these teams tout their resilience, this was a different kind of win for a Rays team facing a daunting Series deficit, and, by extension, a different kind of loss for a Brewers team that had an astonishing eight-game postseason winning streak (one shy of a new record) snapped.
“That’s part of it, right?” Brewers captain Christian Yelich said. “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.”
If it’s a math test, the answers are still easier for the Brewers than the Rays. Tampa Bay was the 44th team to face an 0-3 hole in a best-of-seven. They’re just the 11th to force a Game 5. They’ll try to become just the fifth -- and the first in the World Series -- to force a Game 6.
The Rays had played so poorly in this Series’ first three games that, in a time in the baseball calendar when a week feels like a month, you could be forgiven for forgetting how good they actually are. The defense, plate approach and aggressive-but-not-reckless baserunning that had defined their rise to the top of the AL East and their pursuit of the AL pennant had completely vanished. They no longer had the luxury of thinking about winning four games or even one.
“We need to win an inning first,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said before Game 4.
He had no way of knowing there would be 12 of them.
In Game 4, the Rays took a 1-0 lead and lost it. They took a 2-1 lead and lost that.
But, for once, they weren’t the only ones making mistakes. Their second run came because the Brewers’ starting third baseman, David Hamilton, missed a tag on Junior Caminero and then threw errantly to first to allow Caminero to score in the fourth.
With the score knotted at 2 from the top of the fifth all the way to the 12th, both teams dug deep into their bullpens. Notably, the Rays summoned would-be Game 5 starter Nick Martinez for a pair of scoreless relief innings, while the Brewers got yet another extended gem from Aaron Ashby in what has become a record relief run of 18 straight scoreless innings (MLBPA assistant Andrew Miller was in the house to see his 2016 record fall).
Along the way, there was a beautiful double play turned by Brice Turang on a 101.8-mph liner off the bat of Jonathan Aranda. There was a great leaping catch by Chandler Simpson at the left-field wall to prevent extra bases off the bat of Garrett Mitchell. There was a key overturn of Pratt’s initially safe steal of second in the ninth.
There was a lot of stuff because, well, there were a lot of innings.
But it’s the 12th that will stand out in the annals of baseball time.
Seymour came on to replace Cam Booser, and Pratt, who had already notched three hits on the night, led off. When Pratt got a 2-2 sweeper middle-in, he crushed it out to the left-center seats.
It’s hard to describe the sound of a visiting team’s go-ahead homer being celebrated by so many fans that it feels like a walk-off. We’ll just go with loud. Really freaking loud.
“That was probably one of the coolest swings of my life,” Pratt said. “But it’s over.”
With the score now 3-2 and the Brewers close enough to taste that bubbly, it looked over in a different way. And when Jackson Chourio doubled with two out, this could have become one of those tight, tense games where the dam breaks and the leading team pulls away convincingly.
Instead, Seymour got NLCS MVP Jake Bauers to pop out to end the top of the 12th and keep the Rays in striking distance.
“I’m pitching for the season there,” Seymour said.
Joey Ortiz became the second Brewers third baseman to make a costly miscue in the bottom of the inning. Caminero grounded one Ortiz’s way, and his long throw to first bounced in front of Bauers and off his glove. The error allowed Caminero to reach, and instantly you could feel the momentum shift in the building.
Milwaukee replaced Antonio Senzatela with Shane Drohan.
The rest played out in rapid succession.
Liam Hicks grounded one through the left side, and Caminero motored to third. Jonny DeLuca grounded one up the middle to score pinch-runner Cedric Mullinswith the tying run. Simpson lined a single to center to load the bases.
And then, finally, Williamson scored pinch-runner Nick Fortes with the bouncer that prompted a party in St. Pete.
A singles party, to be exact. A very Rays-like inning.
“We weren't knocking balls in the gap or knocking balls out of the ballpark,” manager Kevin Cash said. “We pieced together a big inning, maybe the most important inning of our season.”
Maybe? No maybes about it. That inning was as big as it gets.
It’s given the Rays a pulse. It’s given the Brewers a scare. And it’s given the rest of us the gift of more baseball.