ARLINGTON, TEXAS — A riveting, whipsaw of rallies and rapid responses Saturday night was baseball at its best until the Los Angeles Dodgers attempted to get the final out of the game – and then it got better with the wildest walk-off in World Series history.
Well, once Randy Arozarena got back on his feet.
Sprinting too fast for his batting helmet to keep up, Arozarena peeled around third, tripped, stumbled, barrel-rolled toward home and an apparent out. When the ball got away from LA, Arozarena scrambled toward the plate and dove home as the winning run in Tampa Bay’s stunning 8-7 victory against the Dodgers in Game 4 at Globe Life Field.
Down by a run, down to their final out and their final strike and their final bat off the bench, the Rays turned Brett Phillips’ legend-forging single into the maddest 90 feet since Enos Slaughter rounded third in 1946. Phillips’ base hit to center scored Kevin Kiermaier to tie the game. When the ball glanced off outfielder Chris Taylor’s glove, Arozarena got pin-wheeled home. Three strides past third, he fell, rolled over his left shoulder, and the Dodgers had him cold – until catcher Will Smith couldn’t control the throw home and had no backup.
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Arozarena slid home, and slapped the plate with his right hand six, seven, eight times. A game when he made history with his bat, Arozarena won with his reach, and he couldn’t stop grinning.
His glad dash tied the World Series, two games apiece, and left the Dodgers dazed.
“He’s been flawless this whole playoffs, (so) of course maybe if someone else is running they probably catch that ball and tag him,†Kiermaier said. “Randy is doing special things right now, and this game works in mysterious ways. For them to botch that there at the end, to let us score the winning run of the game – you just can’t make this stuff up. Can’t make it up. I’m in awe right now, people.â€
“Storybook baseball,†infielder Brandon Lowe said. “That was insane.â€
Said manager Kevin Cash: “I wish I had better words to describe what the club is feeling right now. The moment the ball left Phillips’ bat we knew we had a tie ballgame. And with everything that happened afterward – Randy is not used to having to run like that. Normally he’s trotting.â€
The Rays had two leads in the game – one during the seesaw middle innings and then when Arozarena touched home. Dotted with flashes of history, the captivating game featured at least a run in every inning from the second to the end. The two teams scored at least a run in eight consecutive half innings. No World Series game had ever featured that many echoes, and it made for an enthralling contest ornamented with bursts of personal records. Arozarena’s fourth-inning homer gave him a record nine this postseason. His three hits gave him 26 for the tournament. Already the record-holder for rookies in a single postseason, Arozarena is now tied with Pablo Sandoval for the overall playoff record. Justin Turner hit the 12th playoff homer of his career to become the Dodgers’ all-time leader, and with Corey Seager became the fourth tandem of teammates to have four hits each in a World Series game. The rewrite of the record books was the story until Tampa Bay’s late plot twists.
The Rays took their first lead in the bottom of the sixth, tied the game in the bottom of the seventh, and won it in the bottom of the ninth.
They used 14 of the 15 position players on the roster to arrive at Phillips taking the most important at-bat so far of their season.
“I’m sure (Cash) was like, ‘Oh, oh no,’†Phillips said. “We’ve got to go to the last guy on the bench.â€
Phillips was an eighth-grader in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 2008 when his hometown Rays last appeared in the World Series, and he was gleefully putting it all together after Saturday’s win. He stopped an answer during his presser to send a message to young kids like he once was so that “keep dreaming big.†An addition to the roster for the World Series, Phillips’ previous base hit was a month ago, and he was on the roster as a defensive replacement, pinch-runner, and, armed with a clipboard, motivational sign-maker.
He had been alerted to a likely at-bat in the ninth inning and a coach approached him to tell him he would win the game. Phillips ducked into the batting cage to loosen up his swing. He figured if the inning got to him, he’d face a lefty, so he only took swings against a lefty.
When he stepped in the box, righty Kenley Jansen stared back at him.
The inning started coming apart on the Dodgers’ closer when he splintered Kiermaier’s bat and still a base hit got just beyond second baseman Enrique Hernandez’s glove. The plate appearance that sprung the inning for the Rays was, of course, Arozarena’s. A day after he homered off Jansen, Arozarena worked a seven-pitch walk. He took a full-count pitch in the dirt and even stopped to hand catcher Smith his mask before accepting the walk.
“He lets the guy behind him be a hero,†Phillips said.
Phillips flipped his single to center, and the runners were off to the races. In center for the first time in these playoffs, Taylor bobbled the ball. The throw in was rushed. Arozarena said he had one thought as he broke from first base on Phillips’ contact: “I was thinking score.†Third-base coach Rodney Linares waved Arozarena home to test the Dodgers against his speed. As Arozarena fell, Smith couldn’t glove Max Muncy’s throw, and Jansen didn’t back up the play. Linares shouted in Spanish for Arozarena to “go, go, go,†but he had already went for the win.
“I saw Randy trip, my heart stopped,†Lowe said. “I saw the ball go by him, my heart started pounding again. … I’m about to live 15 years shorter. I think I lost 10 years of my life on that last play.â€
“One of the best moments in baseball right there,†Linares said.
“It’s like that un-perfect storm,†LA manager Dave Roberts said.
The barometer started dropping a few innings earlier as the Dodgers’ relievers began to erode the game starter Julio Urias turned over to them. Urias struck out nine of the 18 batters he faced. The two runs he allowed were both on solo homers, and both narrowed LA’s lead. They didn’t erase it. Roberts removed Urias in the fifth inning, and that’s when the raucous started. The five-day forecast calls for turbulence and thunderclouds of criticism for Roberts if LA, behind lefty Clayton Kershaw, does regain its grip on the series Sunday.
Compared to the hairpin turns that came later, the first half of the game was a quaint, scenic drive of postseason records. Homers by Turner and Seager gave LA a 2-0 lead and made the Dodgers the first team with at least two players hitting a home run in the first four games of a World Series.
Seager’s homer was his eighth of the postseason, drawing him into a tie with Arozarena, Carlos Beltran (2004), Barry Bonds (2002), and Nelson Cruz (2011). Only Beltran didn’t reach the World Series. Bonds held the record alone for two years.
It was a trio of hitters for nine years before Arozarena tied them Friday.
Seager made it five in the third inning Saturday.
His time atop the list lasted about an inning.
In the bottom of the fourth, Arozarena’s second hit of the game and second hit off Urias cleared the right-field fence and into the Dodgers’ bullpen. That gave Arozarena, the former Cardinals’ prospect, his ninth homer of this postseason. He got there in his 18th game, one more than Cruz and Bonds played in their playoffs, and six more than Beltran. Arozarena wasn’t done. His single in the sixth inning leapfrogged Albert Pujols, David Freese, and others to tie Sandoval for the lead in any single-postseason with 26 hits.
Arozarena’s leadoff single in the fifth was prelude to Lowe’s two-strike, three-run homer that claimed the Rays’ first lead. Joc Pederson answered with a two-run, two-out single in the seventh, and Seager’s fourth hit was an RBI single for a 7-6 lead into the ninth.
That’s where the game found Phillips.
“Have this unrelenting belief that I was going to come in and help a team win or do a job, like I’m asked,†Phillips said. “We wouldn’t be here if we couldn’t do that.â€
After Arozarena scored, Phillips soared off into left field, his arms extended like an airplane. He admitted later that he was so happy that he ran so far so fast that he lost his breath. Surrounded by teammates, Phillips was “this close to passing out,†he said. His knack for timing went beyond the field as his wife Bri arrived in Texas on Saturday, seeing a playoff game in person for the first time. She had remained back in the Tampa Bay area working, at jewelry store Gold & Diamond Source, and is not cleared through COVID-19 protocols to enter the protective bubble. But she was at the ballpark for the game.
“They let her take off some work for the World Series – who wouldn’t, right?†Phillips said. “I’m glad I didn’t have a walk-off hit the last couple of days before she got here.â€