The Tampa Bay Rays gave the Milwaukee Brewers a dose of their own medicine in Game 4 of the World Series to avoid getting swept Tuesday night (and Wednesday morning) in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Rays extended their season at least one more day thanks to a walk-off single from Ben Williamson to win the game, 4-3, in 12 innings.

The Rays jumped out to an early lead with an RBI double from Chandler Simpson to get the scoring started in the second inning.

But just as they have all season, the Brewers always seemed to have an answer. Milwaukee leveled the game at 1-1 in the top of the fourth inning on a Cooper Pratt double.

The Rays immediately reclaimed the lead in the bottom of the fourth thanks to a throwing error from Brewers third baseman David Hamilton, who immediately atoned with a game-tying home run in the fifth inning to knot the game at 2-2.

The game would grind on tied 2-2 into the late innings, and eventually into extra innings. As each team exhausted their bullpen and bench, it became a question of which team was going to blink first.

 

Tuesday turned into Wednesday as the game reached a climactic 12th inning. Pratt struck again for Milwaukee with a towering home run into the left field seats off Tampa Bay reliever Ian Seymour that had the Brewers sitting on the brink of their first championship in franchise history.

But the Rays channeled their inner Brewer in the bottom of the 12th inning. That meant small ball and a lot of traffic on the base paths.

Junior Caminero led off the inning with a bouncer to third base and reached safely on a throwing error by Brewers replacement third baseman Joey Ortiz. Liam Hicks followed that with a soft chopper that found its way into left field and moved Caminero to third base.

Next up, Jonny DeLuca hit a seeing-eye grounder back up the middle and through to center field to drive in pinch-runner Cedric Mullins. After failing to get a sacrifice bunt down, Simpson lined a single into center field to load the bases with no one out.

Ben Williamson then stepped to the plate and hit a high chopper over the first baseman’s head into right field to score pinch-runner Nick Fortes with the game-winning run.

Of the first 25 teams that have ever fallen into such a Fall Classic hole, none came all the way back to win it all. None forced a Game 7. None forced a Game 6. Only four avoided the sweep to even play a Game 5.

 

The Rays, the 26th such team to find themselves on the ignominious end of a 3-0 start to the World Series, at least have done that much.

They lost each of the first two games in Milwaukee with the tying run standing on third base for the final out. They returned to Tampa, where they enjoyed the AL’s best home record in the regular season, to find Tropicana Field overrun with Milwaukee fans and got embarrassed in a blowout.

At that point, history said they should probably just pack it in.

Instead they battled for 12 innings to keep their season alive and in the end won with a barrage of singles that culminated with the last man off the bench pinch-hitting for a game-winning RBI.

“We got a lot of fight in us,” Chandler Simpson, who has flashed his vastly improved outfield defense through the series while running rampant on the basepaths, said on the Fox broadcast after the game.

“We gonna keep fighting to the end, the last inning, the last out, the last play, the last pitch. We’re gonna keep fighting like we did tonight.”

 

The Brewers – the best team in baseball the past two regular seasons – are fantastic, but a sweep would have obfuscated just how close a matchup this series could, and should, be – and was for at least one night (and into the wee hours of the next morning). Tampa is still on the brink.

The late game heroics make for a Game 5 on Wednesday where the Rays will once again try to cobble together a win, having used their scheduled Game 5 starter Nick Martinez in relief on Tuesday.

The Brewers will send presumptive National League Cy Young Award winner Jacob Misiorowski to the mound to try to clinch their first-ever World Series title.