This World Series felt like it was in danger of losing its steam, as they all do when one team begins forcefully applying a throw pillow to the face of the other. The Milwaukee Brewers had kept the Tampa Bay Devil (yeah, we said it) Rays at arm's length through each of the first three games, and even though those had been interesting and even occasionally wacky games, they all ended the same way. The specter of a cold winter and uncertain spring loomed larger with each evening's parade of invincible Brewers relievers.
Thus, the desperate need for a complete and utter piefight in Game 4, with extra innings, bonfires in both bullpens, a hilarious ending followed by a more hilarious ending to that ending, and, best of all, an additional game of baseball. Game 5 is tonight, and will be played between two teams that now seem just a bit better matched than they had four-and-a-half hours earlier.
The basic cadaver of the story is this: Tampa won Game 4 by the score of 4-3, in 12 innings. In so doing they extended the Series at least another day and put off the moment when everyone who cares about baseball will have to start thinking about the impending lockout. But the autopsy is always about the details, and it is the way in which the Rays went about the business of desperate flailing that breathed new life and interest into what had become a slightly too clinical clash of champions.
For the first 11 innings last night, Milwaukee once again seemed to have the game and the series by the thorax, even though the Brewers had fallen behind in both the second, and fourth innings. Even during the game's long fallow period, a healthy two hours and change from David Hamilton's game-tying home run in the fifth and the fireworks of the 12th, it was hard to shake the feeling that this game was Milwaukee's to win and that they, like any decently deranged cat, the Brewers were just playing with their food. That left Tampa in the role of food, and they inhabited it convincingly; from Junior Caminero's single and Jonny DeLuca's subsequent run-scoring fielder's choice grounder in the fourth inning until the 12th, the Rays managed two very modest singles and 24 deeply unthreatening outs.
The Brewers looked almost but not quite as inert. After Hamilton's improbable homer off Rays starter Griffin Jax to start the fifth, Milwaukee arrived in the twelfth without a single runner beyond first base. The game had settled into a slow-motion conga line of uninspiring outs by each side, with the monotony broken only by pitching changes and the occasional William Contreras challenge of a ball-strike call, which were invariably correct to the point where even people who were not detectably drunk were suggesting it could be a criterion in choosing him as the Series MVP.
But the series would have to end for that, and Game 4 just went on stubbornly not ending. Just as Joe Davis and John Smoltz (the aforementioned people making Contreras's MVP case), were becoming audibly disgusted at the effort of trying to pump life into all that unremitting ennui, the Brewers sprang to life. Cooper Pratt, the Brewers shortstop who three years earlier was a high school student and more recently had been responsible for three of Milwaukee's six hits, turned on an indifferently aimed sweeper from Ian Seymour, Tampa's seventh pitcher, and dumped it into the second row of the left field seats. Surely this was Milwaukee's denouement—57 years of casting no historical shadow coming to an end, and with it a series that was ready to conclude before it had provided a full sampling of its promised wares.
But something had happened an inning earlier that would eventually provide Tampa with its get-out-of-the-morgue card—Aaron Ashby, the undisputed godhead of this October's pitchers, was replaced with one out in the 11th after yet one more brilliantly silent outing. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy did nothing wrong here; Ashby has been the busiest of all the Brewers, appearing in multiple innings over multiple appearances in the postseason, and had thrown 31 pitches in this outing. Between him and left fielder Jackson Chourio, the Series Most Valuable Trophy had been all but engraved, Contreras's umpiring skills notwithstanding.
But Ashby's removal meant that Murphy had gone through all but the least-used of his relievers, which seemed a worthwhile enough gamble when Antonio Senzatela calmly got the last two outs of the 11th and Pratt hit his homer to lead off the next frame. It wasn't. Instead, in the bottom of the 12th, the Brewers reached the storm door of their seemingly endless pitching staff. Backup third baseman Joey Ortiz threw Caminero's leadoff grounder past first baseman Jake Bauers, which put Caminero on base and convinced Murphy to replace Senzatela with lefthander Shane Drohan, who had pitched once in the last month and had never been in a save situation. It was an all-in shove by a man who looks experienced at leaning his abdomen into a poker table. Murphy had used all his other relievers already, and was down to his five starting pitchers. Drohan would have to make it up as he went along. As you may have guessed given the final score we already have provided you six paragraphs northward, it went poorly.
First, Liam Hicks singled Caminero to third; Tampa Bay's star arrived limping and sore and was replaced by pinch-runner Cedric Mullins. Then DeLuca hit a ground ball up the middle and into center field to score Mullins and tie the game. Chandler Simpson, who had driven in Tampa's first run of the game seemingly three weeks earlier, first failed to get a bunt down but four pitches later was gifted a sinker that didn't sink; he slapped it to center to send DeLuca to third. And finally, pinch-hitter Ben Williamson, who had one hit in 15 postseason at-bats, was called upon to hit for outfield replacement Victor Mesa, Jr. Williamson chopped another Drohan sinker-that-didn't into the ground—he hit it 100.5 mph, at a launch angle of -20—and over Milwaukee's five-man infield into right. Pinch-runner Nick Fortes, who had come on for Hicks, came home with the winning run, and a game that hard reached "backup catcher as pinch-runner" status came to its end.
And the series, however shallowly, breathed anew. The Rays, who had been epochally bad on offense through their first four games, put together four consecutive modest singles, the last three with two strikes and one after a mangled bunt attempt, to save their sorry asses and our hopes for a longer and more effervescent series. They may not have Caminero for Game 5, even though manager Kevin Cash assured the nation he would play on one leg if required—"I'll make sure of it," Cash, whose own leg presumably feels fine, said—and Milwaukee may not have Ashby, who has now thrown 258 pitches over nine games in this postseason, including three back-to-backs.
Indeed, Cash may have the deeper bullpen in Game 5 because, unlike Murphy, he didn't fully empty out his relief staff chasing a game that all visible evidence suggested the Rays could never win. Murphy will have Jacob Misiorowski, his flame-throwing embryo of an ace, for as long as Misiorowski can last; he has gotten to the sixth inning only once since September 8. Murphy will almost certainly not have Ashby, who extended his scoreless streak to the equivalent of two full games last night but is surely testing the physiological limits of even the most Tungsten arm.
It must be noted that no team that went up 3-0 in the World Series has ever lost Games 4 and 5, but also this series has shed the fait accompli vibe it brought into Game 4. There was just too much baseball in it to believe that the Series is all the way out. Game 4 was richly madcap and a colossal waste of human resources on both sides; all the position players but Milwaukee backup catcher Gary Sanchez were used, and all the relievers save Garrett Cleavinger and Cole Sulser, the Rays' break-glass-in-case-of-16th-inning assets.
It feels, in short, like the Series has just begun, or has merely decided it isn't quite ready to end. If this series knows what's good for it, it will find a way to get to the weekend. Whatever comedy can be extracted from that will be greatly welcome, because the ensuing winter promises nothing but extreme meteorological and cultural cruelty. Might as well stock up on what we still can before then.
