The Tampa Bay Rays refused to go quietly. Down to their final three outs and staring at a sweep, the Rays staged a wild 12th-inning rally at Tropicana Field on Tuesday night, beating the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in World Series Game 4 to keep their season — and their championship dream — alive.
Pinch hitter Ben Williamson delivered the winning blow, bouncing a single into right field to score pinch runner Nick Fortes and send the Rays pouring out of the dugout in celebration. The Brewers, who had been one out away from their first World Series title in franchise history, instead watched a 3-2 lead in the 12th inning dissolve into one of the most stunning collapses of the postseason.
The game looked lost for Tampa Bay more than once. The Brewers carried a 2-1 lead into the later innings, and after the Rays tied it, Milwaukee appeared to have delivered the knockout blow in the 12th. Pratt, the 22-year-old rookie shortstop who has announced himself on baseball's biggest stage, launched a solo home run to lead off the top of the 12th, giving the Brewers a 3-2 lead and silencing much of Tropicana Field. The champagne, by several accounts, was ready. The plastic sheeting to protect the visitors' clubhouse was being unrolled.
Then baseball happened. Junior Caminero opened the bottom of the 12th with a routine ground ball to third base. Ortiz, one of the game's most reliable defenders, threw it past first baseman Jake Bauers, and Caminero reached safely. That error chased starter-turned-reliever Antonio Senzatela from the game and brought in Drohan, whose World Series debut turned into a nightmare. Drohan did not retire a single batter.
Liam Hicks singled to left field, sending pinch runner Cedric Mullins to third. Jonny DeLuca followed with a single up the middle, past a drawn-in infield, to score Mullins and tie the game 3-3. Chandler Simpson, after first trying to bunt, slapped a single to centre field to load the bases with nobody out. Then Williamson, called on as a pinch hitter, bounced a ground ball over Bauers and into right field. Fortes raced home, the Rays mobbed Williamson near first base, and a season that had seemed over minutes earlier was alive again.
It was only the fourth game in World Series history in which a team facing elimination won in extra innings, and the Rays became just the fifth team ever to trail 3-0 in a World Series and still force a Game 5.
The context made the comeback all the more remarkable. Milwaukee had dominated the series to that point. The Brewers won Game 1 by 3-2 and Game 2 by 5-4, then routed Tampa Bay 10-1 in Game 3 behind an eight-run fifth inning, with Jackson Chourio collecting four hits and pitcher Gasser throwing six shutout innings while facing the minimum 18 batters through six. The Brewers were one win from the first championship in the franchise's 57-year history, and from completing a sweep in their first World Series appearance in 44 years.
Tampa Bay, meanwhile, had been its own worst enemy. As Rays starter Griffin Jax acknowledged after the game, the Rays had given Milwaukee extra chances in each of the first three games, and the Brewers had punished every mistake. "Unfortunately, we haven't been playing the cleanest baseball for the last three games," Jax said. "You can tell by the three losses we have that we've been giving them a lot of extra chances, and you can't do that against the Brewers. They've taken advantage of everything."
The early scoring in Game 4 followed the same pattern of small margins. Chandler Simpson ripped an RBI double in the second inning to open the scoring, with DeLuca hustling home from first. Pratt answered with an RBI double in the fourth, and David Hamilton homered to lead off the fifth to tie the game 2-2, atoning for an earlier miscue. Simpson also made a leaping catch at the wall in the ninth to keep the game alive, a defensive gem that would have been forgotten in a loss.
The box score tells the story of a knife-edge contest: Tampa Bay 9 hits to Milwaukee's 8, the Rays committing one error to the Brewers' two — but the second of those errors, in the 12th, was the one that changed everything. Ian Seymour earned the win for Tampa Bay, allowing one run on two hits in one inning, while Drohan took the loss after permitting one run on four hits without recording an out.
The 12th inning deserves to be retold pitch by pitch, because it contained the entire series in miniature. Pratt, already enjoying a four-hit night — the first rookie ever to collect four hits in a World Series clinching game — deposited a 2-2 sweeper from Seymour over the wall in left-centre field. It was the go-ahead homer, the kind of moment that is supposed to end series. The Brewers' dugout erupted. Their fans, who had travelled in huge numbers to St. Petersburg and filled bars and restaurants from Tampa to Clearwater to Sarasota, were ready to celebrate.
Then Ortiz's throw sailed wide. Then Hicks singled. Then DeLuca tied it. Then Simpson loaded the bases. Then Williamson ended it. Four consecutive singles off Drohan, none of them hit particularly hard, all of them placed perfectly. It was, in the cruellest sense for Milwaukee, a soft collapse: no towering home run, no dramatic blast, just a slow bleed of singles and one fatal error.
Chourio, who recorded two more hits to reach 10 for the first four games of the series — a feat previously achieved only by Babe Ruth in 1928 — could only watch as the celebration moved to the other side of the field. The Brewers' bullpen, which had pitched eight consecutive scoreless innings before the 12th, had finally cracked, just as it had begun to crack the night before when Cam Booser also allowed four consecutive singles.
Williamson, the hero, kept it simple afterwards. "Just shows the resiliency of this group," he said. "We continue to fight and that's been the motto this series and this whole season."
Jax, who started Game 4 for Tampa Bay, was blunt about what had come before and what had changed. "These are the two best teams left in baseball," he said. "There's no rewriting the script. No changes in who we are." Then he added the line that will live in Rays lore: "But this time, they re-wrote the script."
Caminero, whose ground ball started the rally, had earlier in the series told Brewers catcher William Contreras that he wished Milwaukee well — and then taken it back. "Earlier, I told William Contreras, you know, you have my blessing. You know, I wish you the best in this series," Caminero said. "But now, it's kind of like, well you've played a little too well."
On the Milwaukee side, the mood was disbelief mixed with determination. Drew Rasmussen, beaten in Game 2, had been generous before the game about an opponent he felt had outplayed Tampa Bay in every phase. After Game 4, the Brewers' focus shifted immediately to Game 5 and to the pitcher they had been saving for exactly this moment.
Game 4 matters because it changed the psychology of the series. A sweep would have confirmed Milwaukee's dominance and ended Tampa Bay's season with a whimper. Instead, the Rays now carry genuine momentum into Game 5, and the Brewers must confront the memory of a celebration that was interrupted. History is not on Tampa Bay's side — no team has ever come back from 3-0 down to win a World Series, and only the 2004 Boston Red Sox have ever recovered from 3-0 down in any best-of-seven postseason series — but the Rays do not need history. They need three more wins, starting with one on Wednesday night.
It matters, too, because of what it revealed about both teams. Milwaukee's bullpen, the engine of its postseason run, is showing cracks at the worst possible time. Tampa Bay's resilience, questioned after three listless games, is real. And Pratt's emergence — four hits, a go-ahead homer in the 12th, a series for the ages from a 22-year-old rookie — is a storyline that will outlast this series whatever happens next.
For the sport itself, Game 4 was a gift: a 12-inning, extra-innings elimination classic, decided by a pinch hitter, in front of a split crowd of travelling Brewers fans and defiant Rays supporters. The World Series needed a game like this after three largely one-sided contests, and it got one at the last possible moment.
Game 5 is scheduled for Wednesday night, October 28, at 7:08 p.m. CT at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg. Milwaukee will turn to ace Jacob Misiorowski — "The Miz" — to finish the job. Manager Pat Murphy confirmed after Game 4 that Misiorowski was never an option out of the bullpen on Tuesday night. "You can't blow that type of situation on a one-run lead on the road," Murphy said. "If we were in the 13th inning and we had a three-run lead that might be a little bit different."
Tampa Bay, meanwhile, may turn to Drew Rasmussen, who was beaten in Game 2 but remains the Rays' most trusted starter. The Rays will also need to solve a Brewers lineup that has out-hit, out-pitched and out-defended them for most of the series — and to prove that Game 4 was a turning point rather than a last gasp.
If Milwaukee wins Game 5, the championship celebration merely moves by a day. If Tampa Bay wins, the series returns to Milwaukee for Game 6 on Friday, October 30, with a Game 7, if necessary, on Saturday, October 31. Either way, the Brewers still hold three chances to win one game. The Rays hold one chance to keep believing.
One more note from the night: the travelling Brewers fans made their presence felt far beyond the ballpark. Jake Ferguson, owner of Ferg's Sports Bar and Grill just outside Tropicana Field, said his bar sold 1,000 cases of Miller Lite and Coors Lite in a single day — a normal month's supply — and had to call in an emergency beer shipment. On Tuesday night, at least, those fans drank in disappointment. On Wednesday, they will try again.
The Tampa Bay Rays beat the Milwaukee Brewers 4-3 in 12 innings at Tropicana Field on October 27, 2026.
Pinch hitter Ben Williamson singled to right field in the bottom of the 12th inning, scoring pinch runner Nick Fortes for the walk-off win.
Milwaukee leads the best-of-seven series 3-1. Game 5 is on Wednesday, October 28, at Tropicana Field.
No team has ever won a World Series after trailing 3-0. The Rays are only the fifth team in history to trail 3-0 and force a Game 5.
Milwaukee ace Jacob Misiorowski is scheduled to start Game 5 on Wednesday night, manager Pat Murphy confirmed after Game 4.
Read more on US News Pulse: Brewers rout Rays 10-1 in World Series Game 3, World Series Game 4 preview: Brewers one win from first title, and Stephen Curry's perfect night powers Warriors past Nuggets.
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