Cooper Pratt is a 22-year-old rookie.
In the top of the twelfth inning last night in St. Petersburg, with the World Series tied and his franchise three outs from the first championship in its fifty-seven year history, he took a changeup over the middle of the plate and put it into the left field seats.
It was his fourth hit of the game.
The Milwaukee dugout emptied. Grown men spilled onto the top step celebrating what would have been, by a comfortable margin, the biggest hit anyone in that organization has ever produced.
Then they had to go get three outs.
They did not get three outs.
Junior Caminero led off the bottom of the twelfth for Tampa Bay. He hit a ground ball and ran it out, aggravating a left foot injury in the process, and Brewers third baseman Joey Ortiz threw it away.
Jonny DeLuca singled home the tying run.
The Rays loaded the bases.
And Ben Williamson, who had been sitting on the bench for roughly four hours, singled to win it 4 to 3.
Williamson's own description of the experience is the best quote of this postseason.
"Jokingly, in my head I was thinking, yeah, I've been ready to hit since the fourth or fifth inning."
He had been. Nobody asked him until the twelfth.
What Tampa Bay actually did to survive.
Understand the situation the Rays were in. They had been demolished 10 to 1 in Game 3, including the first eight-run inning in World Series history. They were down three games to none. Twenty-five previous teams have been down 0-3 in a World Series and the number that have come back is zero.
Manager Kevin Cash emptied the building.
Twenty-one players. Seven pitchers. He used everybody, including burning arms he would presumably have preferred to save for a Game 5 that did not yet exist, because Game 5 does not exist unless you win Game 4.
That is the correct call and it is not an easy one. The temptation in a 3-0 hole is to manage for dignity, lose respectably, and go home with your rotation intact. Cash managed like a man who intended to be here Thursday.
And the Brewers are still winning.
This is the part that keeps it honest.
Milwaukee leads the series 3 games to 1. They won 103 games in the regular season, the best record in baseball. This was only their second loss of the entire postseason.
They are still one win from a title that has eluded them since the franchise arrived in 1969, and they get three chances to get it.
Tampa Bay is not coming back from 3-0. Nobody has. The Rays bought a day.
But they bought it the hard way, and in October a day is not nothing.
The thing worth taking from this.
Baseball is the only sport that will let you celebrate too early and then make you stand there while it gets taken back.
There is no clock to run out. You cannot kneel on it. The other team gets its outs no matter how good your home run was, and until you record twenty-seven of them, nothing is finished.
The Brewers came off that bench because a 22-year-old rookie did something extraordinary and they were right to be thrilled about it. Anyone would have. It was the biggest hit in the history of their franchise for approximately eleven minutes.
Then a guy who had been sitting on the bench since dinner got a single.
Game 5 is Thursday in St. Petersburg. Milwaukee still needs one.
They just learned the hard way that one is not zero.
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