Rays were staring at a deep World Series hole. A wild final play changed everything.
The baseball lifers always say that if you hang around the game long enough, it will give something you’ve never seen.
Here’s betting most haven’t seen an ending like the one Saturday in Game 4 of the 116th World Series.
The Tampa Bay Rays, down to the final out, stunned the Los Angeles Dodgers on a crazy play that will be hard to duplicate over the next 116 Fall Classics.
The batter who singled to tie the game hadn’t had an at-bat in a month and had never had a postseason hit.
The center fielder whose bobble of the single provided an opening for the winning run to score? He started the game in left field and started Game 3 at second base.
The runner trying to score fell down and was dead meat.
The catcher couldn’t handle an easy relay throw home.
Put it all together, and two runs scored on a Brett Phillips single to lift the Rays to an 8-7 walk-off win.
The Dodgers were a strike away from a 3-1 lead in the best-of-7 series. Now, the Dodgers and Rays will play a best-of-3 to determine baseball’s 2020 champion.
Game 5 is scheduled for Sunday night at Globe Life Field.
“We needed something to go our way,” manager Kevin Cash said. “And tonight it did.”
The clubs combined for six home runs, four by the Rays. The lead changed hands three times, and the Dodgers broke a 6-6 tie in the eighth on a two-out bloop hit by Corey Seager.
The Dodgers gave the ball to closer Kenley Jansen in the ninth, and he sandwiched outs around a one-out Kevin Kiermaier single. Randy Arozarena, the Rays’ postseason breakthrough star, batted with two outs and was down 1-2 in the count before drawing a walk.
That brought up Phillips, who stroked a soft line drive to center field on a 1-2 pitch.
Chris Taylor charged the ball. Kiermaier was going to score easily even if Taylor hadn’t booted the ball. But the error gave Arozarena a chance to score, and it was going to be close.
Then, it wasn’t.
“It would have been a bang-bang play had Randy not barrel-rolled between home and third,” Cash said.
Dodgers first baseman Max Muncy, who cut off Taylor’s throw home, saw Arozarena on the ground and made an easy throw home. Catcher Will Smith, though, dropped it.
The ball deflected off the plate umpire and to the right of home plate, and Arozarena finally did make it safely.
Tampa Bay went nuts, eventually chasing down Phillips in left field to mob him and then taking the celebration to the clubhouse.
“I wish I had the words to describe how the club is feeling right now,” said Cash, who described the scene as “about 40 people besides themselves and wondering what the heck had just happened.”
The Dodgers, a strike away from a commanding lead in the World Series, were stunned, too.
“It was like that imperfect storm,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s a tough one. It’s tough and we’ve got to digest it. But we’ve got to turn the page.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2020 at 12:24 AM.
