The Tampa Bay Rays extended their season in dramatic fashion early Wednesday, Oct. 28, defeating the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in 12 innings during Game 4 of the World Series. Ben Williamson delivered the decisive blow with an RBI single off reliever Shane Drohan, securing a wild victory that prevented the Brewers from completing a sweep and capturing the first championship in franchise history.
The high-stakes finish placed the Rays into rare historical company. Statistics and research data highlighted on social media revealed that Tampa Bay became just the fourth team in World Series history to stave off postseason elimination through an extra-inning comeback. The three previous clubs to achieve the feat—the 1912 Boston Red Sox, the 1986 New York Mets, and the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals—ultimately rallied to win their respective championships.
Adding to the historical resonance, Williamson’s game-winning hit arrived exactly 15 years to the day after David Freese hit his iconic 11th-inning home run in Game 6 of the 2011 World Series to spark the Cardinals past the Texas Rangers. The Wednesday triumph also snapped Milwaukee’s nine-game postseason winning streak and halted what threatened to be an anticlimactic conclusion to the 2026 baseball campaign.
The tense extra-frame drama unfolded after the Brewers appeared poised to close out the series in the top of the 12th. Milwaukee broke a 2-2 tie when Cooper Pratt launched a solo home run against Rays pitcher Ian Seymour, putting the visitors just three outs away from a title celebration. Facing a 3-2 deficit, the Rays mounted a decisive two-out rally in the bottom half of the inning, stringing together four consecutive singles against Drohan to plate the tying and winning runs.
The comeback marked the 17th walk-off victory by a team facing elimination in the history of the Fall Classic, with 14 of those coming in extra innings. Historical records show that among the 44 teams that previously fell behind 3-0 in a World Series, only 11 managed to avoid a sweep entirely. Furthermore, the Rays joined the 1910 Chicago Cubs as the only teams to achieve an extra-inning, elimination-survival win while facing the immediate threat of a sweep.
With the series score shifted to 3-1, the Rays faced a rapid turnaround with Game 5 scheduled later Wednesday in St. Petersburg. Regardless of the ultimate outcome of the championship series, the victory secured a resilient chapter in franchise history for the home crowd at Tropicana Field.
