The Tampa Bay Rays were three outs from getting swept. They aren't anymore.
Ben Williamson, a pinch-hitter, bounced a single into right field in the bottom of the 12th Tuesday night and the Rays beat the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in Game 4 of the World Series. Milwaukee still leads 3-1. Game 5 is Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, which is 5:30 Thursday morning in India, and it's the Rays' last home game of 2026 unless they win it.
Milwaukee had done the hard part. Cooper Pratt, a 22-year-old rookie shortstop, put a 2-2 sweeper into the left-field seats in the top of the 12th for a 3-2 lead. He'd already gone 4 for 5 by that point. The Brewers had the first championship in their history one inning away.
Then Shane Drohan came in and never got an out.
Four singles in a row. Jonny DeLuca's tied it. Chandler Simpson's loaded the bases. Williamson's, the fourth, scored pinch-runner Nick Fortes, and Tropicana Field went loud while "Walking on Sunshine" played over the speakers. The Brewers also made a couple of errors along the way, which for them is unusual.
It was 1-0 Rays in the second, after Simpson doubled and DeLuca ran all the way home from first. It was tied in the fourth on a Pratt RBI double, then Tampa Bay went back in front, then David Hamilton hit a homer in the fifth to tie it again. That was only the third home run of the entire Series.
After that, nothing for a long, long time.
Aaron Ashby threw 2⅓ scoreless innings for Milwaukee, stretching his run of consecutive scoreless relief innings this postseason to 18, a record. Andrew Miller was in the building when his 2016 mark fell. The Rays leaned on Nick Martinez, who was lined up as their Game 5 starter, for two scoreless innings out of the bullpen. That matters for Game 5, and it's unclear who Tampa Bay will start.
The win snapped an eight-game postseason winning streak for Milwaukee, which tied an MLB record. A ninth would have made them the first team to win nine in a row in a single playoff run, and the first to sweep both a best-of-seven league championship series and a World Series.
Walk-offs by a team facing elimination are rare. According to MLB.com, there had been 16 of them in World Series history before this one. The only other team to do it when facing a sweep was the 1910 Cubs.
Not well, honestly. The first three games were a mess. Milwaukee won Game 1 3-2 on Friday in a game that included a replay overturning what looked like a game-ending double play, and ace Jacob Misiorowski opened it with a 103.5 mph pitch, the fastest ever thrown in a World Series game. Game 2 went 5-4 to the Brewers after Tampa Bay jumped out to a 4-0 lead in the first. Liam Hicks hit the first home run of the Series in that game. Milwaukee answered with a Sal Frelick tying homer in the sixth and a go-ahead RBI single from Pratt in the seventh.
Game 3 was ugly. The Brewers won 10-1 on Monday, scoring eight in a fifth inning that included seven straight hits, a first for a postseason game. They outhit Tampa Bay 16 to 3. Jake Bauers made the second out of that inning and, by the end of it, nearly the entire Milwaukee lineup had scored and driven in a run. The Rays' first hit of the night came in the first inning, a Yandy Díaz single, and their next two didn't arrive until the ninth.
Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander gave his team a modest goal before Game 4. "Win an inning," he said. They won the second one. Eventually they won the twelfth.
Game 5 is Wednesday at Tropicana Field. The win probability numbers still lean Milwaukee, at roughly 58 percent for the Brewers. If Tampa Bay wins, the series moves back to Milwaukee for Game 6 on Friday (Saturday 5:30 a.m. IST) and a Game 7 on Saturday (Sunday 5:30 a.m. IST) if it goes the distance.
Neither team has won a World Series before, so whoever gets there first writes a new line in the record books.
