The Rays Need Three Straight Wins. Six Teams Have Done It, One With an Umpire's Help

Six. That is the number of teams that have lost three of the first four games of a World Series and gone on to win it, out of something like forty-five that have tried. The Tampa Bay Rays became the forty-sixth at about midnight last night, when Ben Williamson's single in the bottom of the twelfth beat the Brewers 4-3 at Tropicana Field and kept the Series alive. Game 5 is tonight in St. Petersburg. If the Rays win it they go to Milwaukee needing two more, and the history of that is short enough to fit in one article.

A word on the two clubs first. Neither has ever won a World Series. The Brewers' only previous trip was 1982, when they led the Cardinals three games to two and lost the last two in St. Louis. The Rays went in 2008 and 2020 and lost both. Milwaukee's one title, in 1957, belonged to the Braves, who left for Atlanta eight years later.

1925: a game played in fog because the commissioner said so

The first team to do it was the Pittsburgh Pirates, against the Washington Senators and Walter Johnson, who was 37 and had waited eighteen seasons to pitch in a World Series. Johnson won Game 1 and shut Pittsburgh out in Game 4. The Pirates won the next two, and Game 7 was played at Forbes Field on 15 October in a cold rain that had been falling since the night before.

Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had already postponed the game a day and refused to do it again. By the late innings the outfield was mud, the fog was low enough that outfielders were losing fly balls, and the groundskeepers were pouring sawdust on the mound between innings. Johnson pitched the whole game and gave up fifteen hits. Washington led 7-6 going into the eighth, then the Pirates scored three, the last two on a Kiki Cuyler double that landed in the tarpaulin down the right-field line. Pittsburgh won 9-7. The Senators' shortstop, Roger Peckinpaugh, named the American League's most valuable player a week earlier, made eight errors in the seven games, which is still the record.

1958: the last time a Milwaukee team was on the wrong end

The Milwaukee Braves had beaten the Yankees in seven games in 1957, and in 1958 they led the rematch three games to one with two of the last three at home in County Stadium. The Yankees won Game 5 in New York behind Bob Turley, then went to Milwaukee and won Games 6 and 7, Turley saving the first in relief and winning the second, also in relief, two days later. It happened in front of a crowd that had come to watch a second straight title. Brewers fans tonight may prefer not to think about that.

1968 and 1979: Lolich on two days' rest, Stargell's family

Detroit trailed St. Louis three games to one in 1968 and had been outclassed; Bob Gibson struck out seventeen Tigers in Game 1. The Tigers won Game 5 after Willie Horton threw out Lou Brock at the plate (Brock came in standing up, and people in Detroit still talk about it), won Game 6 13-1, and sent Mickey Lolich out for Game 7 on two days' rest against Gibson. Lolich won 4-1 after Curt Flood misread a line drive in the seventh and it went over his head for a triple.

Eleven years later Pittsburgh did it again, against Baltimore, with a 39-year-old Willie Stargell hitting .400 and a clubhouse that had adopted a disco song, "We Are Family", as its anthem. Stargell hit the home run that won Game 7 in Baltimore.

1985: the call at first base

Kansas City had already come back from 3-1 in the league championship series against Toronto that October, so the Royals had at least done it recently. What people remember is the ninth inning of Game 6, St. Louis up 1-0 and three outs from the title. Jorge Orta hit a slow grounder to first, the pitcher covered, and umpire Don Denkinger called Orta safe. Replays showed he was out by half a step. The Royals scored twice and won 2-1, then won Game 7 the next night 11-0, a game in which the Cardinals' manager and starting pitcher were both ejected for arguing with the home-plate umpire, who was Denkinger. Royals fans point out that Kansas City still had to win two games after the call. Cardinals fans have not accepted that point in forty-one years.

2016: a rain delay and a speech

The sixth and most recent was the Chicago Cubs against Cleveland in 2016. Chicago, down 3-1, won Games 5, 6 and 7, the last of them 8-7 in ten innings after Cleveland tied it in the eighth and a seventeen-minute rain delay sent both teams to their clubhouses. Jason Heyward, who had hit almost nothing all Series, called the Cubs into a weight room during the delay and talked. They scored two runs when play resumed. It was the Cubs' first title since 1908.

So the pattern, if there is one: a team down 3-1 tends to need a starting pitcher who can throw twice more, something to go badly wrong for the other side, and some weather. The Rays' bullpen gave Milwaukee one run in eight innings last night, which the 1968 Tigers would have recognised. The weather is less promising. Game 5 is indoors, and Games 6 and 7, if they happen, will be played under a retractable roof in Milwaukee. Two of the six comebacks were settled in the rain. Nobody has yet done it in a dome.