This World Series felt like it was in danger of running out of steam, as all of them do when one team starts forcefully pushing a pillow into the other’s face. The Milwaukee Brewers had kept the Tampa Bay Devils Rays (yes, we said it) at arm’s length throughout each of the first three games, and while those had been interesting and even wacky games at times, they all ended the same way. The specter of a cold winter and an uncertain spring grew greater with the parade each evening of the Brewers’ invincible relievers.
Thus, the desperate need for a complete and utter pie fight in Game 4, complete with extra innings, bonfires in both bullpens, a hilarious ending followed by a more hilarious ending to that ending, and best of all, an extra baseball game. Game 5 takes place this evening and will be played between two teams who now seem a little better matched than they were four and a half hours earlier.
The basic corpse of the story is this: Tampa won Game 4 by a score of 4-3, in 12 innings. In doing so, they extended the series for at least another day and postponed the time when everyone who cares about baseball will have to start thinking about the impending lockout. But the post-mortem is always about the details, and it was the way the Rays engaged in desperate fighting that breathed new life and interest into what had become a slightly too clinical clash of champions.
Through the first 11 innings last night, Milwaukee once again appeared to have the game and the series by the chest, even though the Brewers fell behind in the second and fourth innings. Even during the game’s long downtime, a good two hours and a change from David Hamilton’s game-tying home run in the fifth and the fireworks in the 12th, it was hard to shake the feeling that this game was Milwaukee’s to win and that, like any decently disturbed 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 fielder’s grounder’s choice from the fourth inning through the 12th, the Rays managed two very modest singles and 24 deeply harmless outs.
The Brewers seemed almost inert, 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 on each side, the monotony broken only by pitching changes and William Contreras’ occasional challenge of a ball-strike call, which were invariably correct to the point where even people who weren’t visibly drunk suggested that might be a criterion for choosing him as the Series MVP.
But the series would have to end for that, and Game 4 stubbornly continued without ending. Just as Joe Davis and John Smoltz (the aforementioned people who made Contreras’ MVP case), became visibly disgusted with the idea of trying to bring all this incessant boredom to life, the Brewers came alive. Cooper Pratt, the Brewers shortstop who three years earlier was a high school senior and had more recently been responsible for three of Milwaukee’s six hits, turned on a sweeper driven indifferently by Ian Seymour, Tampa’s seventh pitcher, and threw it into the second row of left-field seats. This was surely Milwaukee’s denouement: 57 years without a historic shadow coming to an end, and with them a series that was ready to end before it had provided a full sample of its promise.
But something had happened an inning earlier that would finally provide Tampa with its get-out-the-morgue card: Aaron Ashby, the undisputed deity of October pitchers, was replaced with one out in the 11th after another brilliantly quiet outing. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy did nothing wrong here; Ashby has been the busiest of all the Brewers, appearing in multiple innings over several postseason appearances, and threw 31 pitches in this outing. Between him and outfielder Jackson Chourio, the series’ most valuable trophy had been all but engraved, despite Contreras’ umpiring skills.
But Ashby’s out meant Murphy used all but his least-used relievers, which seemed a fairly profitable gamble when Antonio Senzatela calmly got the final two outs of the 11th and Pratt hit his home run to start the next frame. This was not the case. Instead, in the bottom of the 12th, the Brewers reached the storm of their seemingly endless pitching staff. Backup third baseman Joey Ortiz threw Caminero’s first baseman past first baseman Jake Bauers, putting Caminero on base and convincing Murphy to replace Senzatela with left-hander Shane Drohan, who had pitched once last month and had never been in a save situation. It was an all-in pushed by a man who seems accustomed to pressing his abdomen against a poker table. Murphy had already used up all of his other relievers and had only five starting pitchers left. Drohan should make up for it as he goes along. As you might have guessed from the endnote we already provided you six paragraphs north, it went badly.
First, Liam Hicks moved Caminero to third; The Tampa Bay star arrived limping and sore and was replaced by backup 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 the first inning of the Tampa game apparently three weeks earlier, failed to get a bunt, but four pitches later he received a sinker that did not sink; he slapped him 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 replacement outfielder Victor Mesa, Jr. Williamson clipped another Drohan sinker that didn’t hit the ground — he hit it at 100.5 mph, with a -20 launch angle — and over Milwaukee’s five-man infield to right. Pinch runner Nick Fortes, who had replaced Hicks, came home with the winning run, and a game that had been hard-hitting “backup catcher as pinch runner” status came to an end.
And the series, even superficially, breathed again. The Rays, who had been historically bad on offense through their first four games, managed four modest straight singles, the last three with two hits and one after a mangled bunt attempt, to save their sorry asses and our hopes of a longer, more spirited series. They may not have Caminero for Game 5, even though manager Kevin Cash assured the nation he would play on one leg if necessary — “I’ll make sure of that,” said Cash, whose leg probably feels fine — and Milwaukee may not have Ashby, who has now thrown 258 pitches in nine postseason games, including three in a row.
Indeed, Cash might have the deepest bullpen in Game 5 because, unlike Murphy, he didn’t completely gut his relief staff to chase a game that all visible evidence suggested the Rays could never win. Murphy will have Jacob Misiorowski, his embryonic flame-throwing ace, for as long as Misiorowski can last; he has only reached the sixth inning once since September 8. Murphy almost certainly won’t 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 should be noted that no team that went 3-0 in the World Series has ever lost Games 4. And 5, but also this series lost the accomplished fact the vibe he brought to Game 4. There was just too much baseball to believe the series is over. Game 4 was richly senseless and a colossal waste of human resources on both sides; all position players except Milwaukee backup catcher Gary Sanchez were used, and all relievers except Garrett Cleavinger and Cole Sulser were the Rays’ assets to break the glass in the event of a 16th inning.
In short, it feels like the series has just started or has simply decided it’s not quite ready to end. If this show knows what’s good for it, it will find a way to make it to the weekend. Whatever comedy can be drawn from this will be welcome, for the ensuing winter promises nothing but extreme meteorological and cultural cruelty. We might as well stock up on what we have left until then.
Gn sports
