It happened just past midnight on the East Coast, 34 years to the day the last time a World Series game concluded like this. There are so many possible outcomes for the final play of a baseball game. Home run. Strikeout. Single. Groundout. It's a testament to how good players are that what unfolded in the earliest hours of Sunday morning was so jaw-dropping, an unforgettable October moment, when a fielding error ends a World Series game.

1. WildestWorldSeriesfinishever?Game
4delivered4hoursand10minutesof
baseballbliss
1d - Jeff PassanLOS ANGELES DODGERS
Passan:ClaytonKershawrepairshis
playofflegacywithGame5win
6h - Jeff PassanLOS ANGELES DODGERS
KershawliftsL.A.toedgeofWStitle,
feels'good'
9h - Jeff PassanLOS ANGELES DODGERS
Attemptedstealofhome'100%'
Margot'sdecision
7h - Jesse RogersTAMPA BAY RAYS
Dodgers'GonsolintostartGame6vs.
Rays'Snell
8h - Alden GonzalezLOS ANGELES DODGERS
ArozarenabreaksSandoval'splayoff
hitsrecord
11h - Jesse RogersTAMPA BAY RAYS
Kershawsetsrecordforpostseason
strikeouts
10h - Alden GonzalezLOS ANGELES DODGERS
Rays'PhillipsneededIVaftergame-
winninghit
15h - Jesse RogersTAMPA BAY RAYS
Dodgersfanshavetakenover'neutral'
sitewithL.A.onewinfromaWorld
Seriestitle
5h - Alden GonzalezLOS ANGELES DODGERS
HowvaluableisMookieBetts?25ways
hehasmadetheDodgersevenbetter
3d - Alden GonzalezLOS ANGELES DODGERS
Passan:HowMookieBettsjustmadethe
super-sabermetricWorldSeriessuper-
fun
5d - Jeff PassanLOS ANGELES DODGERS
2021MLBdraftordersetby2020
standings
13d - ESPN staff
Hour1:WhoTriesToStealHome?
19mLOS ANGELES DODGERS
TheJetssho ldkeepAdamGase ntil
WorldSeries2020:TampaBayRays
revel,LosAngelesDodgersdespairas
Game4deliversbaseballbliss

2.  Share with Facebook  Share with Twitter
8 55PMCT
ARLINGTON, Texas -- It happened just past midnight on the East Coast, 34
years to the day the last time a World Series game concluded like this. There are
so many possible outcomes for the final play of a baseball game. Home run.
Strikeout. Single. Groundout. It's a testament to how good players are that what
unfolded in the earliest hours of Sunday morning was so jaw-dropping, an
unforgettable October moment, when a fielding error ends a World Series
game.
Actually, it was two errors. A game like this, jam-packed with the very things
that make baseball so addictive, deserved no less than something historic --
something even more improbable than Bill Buckner's infamous gaffe Oct. 25,
1986. The denouement of Game 4 -- Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Will Smith
dropping a ball at home plate that allowed Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Randy
Arozarena to dash home, pound home plate with his right hand and gift-wrap
their breathtaking 8-7 victory -- squashed a potential coronation and breathed
life into a series that's again even.
How these 4 hours, 10 minutes of pure baseball bliss came together only adds to
the implausibility of it all, but then that's why this game is bound to go down in
the annals as one of the most memorable in the 116 World Series that have been
played. Even before Brett Phillips looped a two-out, two-strike pitch off Kenley
Jansen into center field, even before Chris Taylor committed the other error,
booting the ball as he tried to field it, even before Arozarena stumbled after
rounding third, even before Smith's howler let him off the hook, this was a
JeffPassan
ESPN



@
°

3. righteous ballgame, an emotional vise, squeezing tighter and tighter until the
whole thing was too much and burst in spectacular fashion.
EDITOR'SPICKS
InsideBrettPhillips'game-winninghit:AdeepdiveonGame4'sbiggest
moment
IsL.A.'slatestbullpenmeltdownthestartofanall-timeOctober
disappointment?
'Man,baseballisfun':SocialmediareactstothewildfinishtoWorldSeries
Game4
It all started around 2 p.m. on Aug. 27. Four days before the trade deadline, the
Kansas City Royals had agreed to a deal to send Phillips, a backup outfielder, to
the Rays. Phillips was elated. He was from Seminole, Florida, a 20-minute drive
from Tropicana Field. It didn't matter that he would get only 25 plate
appearances and be used mostly as a pinch runner and defensive replacement.
He was home. And this amazing Rays team embraced him, too.
Which admittedly isn't difficult. Phillips is one of the most well-liked players in
baseball. When he laughs, it sounds like a goose honking or a pterodactyl
bleating. Last week in the ALCS, when he wasn't even on the Rays' roster, he
nevertheless spent the games in the team's dugout, walking around with a
stopwatch and clipboard, a faux coach who would write motivational messages,
most of which had to do with Arozarena's postseason exploits.
It was fitting, then, for the Rays and Phillips, that the ninth inning of Game 4
unfolded in such fashion. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who had foolishly
left reliever Pedro Baez in to blow two leads earlier in the game, forsook his
hard-throwing rookie reliever Brusdar Graterol, who had finished the eighth
inning, and at one minute past midnight summoned Jansen, hopeful his magic
had not vanished for good.
2020MLBPlayoffs
•Passan:Game4outofasandlotdream»
• InsideGame4'swildfinish»
•Buehlerisbaseball'sOctoberace»
•Expertpicks»|Rankingall56players»

4. Playoffbracket,scheduleandmore»
By no means in this series, or this season, were the Dodgers the Cinderellas of
any manner or variety. They are leviathans in payroll and talent, and if Jansen
could secure the 7-6 lead Roberts handed him, they would hold a 3-1 series lead
and find themselves in prime position to win their first World Series since just
two years after the Buckner error.
The Rays' lineup and Dodgers' defensive alignments were complete messes,
owed to what had happened in the four or so hours prior. The first three games
of this series weren't duds exactly. The Dodgers had hit at a historic clip with
two outs. The Rays had stolen the middle game. There wasn't a single lead
change. Good baseball was played by two excellent baseball teams. Drama has
been hard to come by.
Game 4 made up for it. There were home runs. From the Dodgers' Justin
Turner in the first and Corey Seager in the second, highlights on a night when
both went 4-for-5, and all for naught. From Arozarena and Hunter Renfroe and
Brandon Lowe and Kevin Kiermaier as the Rays fought and clawed and tried to
keep pace. Every time they did, the Dodgers answered with more. They barreled
balls the whole evening, hitting 19 at 95 mph-plus to the Rays' seven. That
Tampa Bay was even here, within a run and ready to stare down Jansen, felt like
providence.
When Jansen blew a sinker past pinch hitter Yoshi Tsutsugo for the first out,
the crowd of 11,411 at Globe Life Field, which has turned into Dodgertown
South, roared. This was it. They were going to win Game 4, and then Clayton
Kershaw, pitching 30 minutes from his hometown of Highland Park, Texas, was
going to pitch them to victory in Game 5, and the postseason demons of their
iconic pitcher would vanish alongside those of an iconic franchise going on
three decades without the most meaningful sort of hardware.
Kiermaier swung at a first-pitch cutter, 93 mph, the kind of velocity Jansen only
found in recent days. It sawed Kiermaier's bat all the way down to the knob.
Broken bats don't always equal outs, though, and the ball fell just out of the
reach of diving Dodgers second baseman Enrique Hernandez out into center
field. The hardest-hit ball of the inning came courtesy of Joey Wendle, who
lined out to left field. With two outs, up stepped Arozarena.
For nearly a month, the 25-year-old rookie, almost a complete unknown outside
of front-office circles and extra-deep fantasy leagues, has looked like the best
hitter in the world. His home run in the fourth gave him nine this postseason, a

5. major league record. His third hit of the night pushed his total to 26, tying the
most in a single playoffs. Arozarena stood in against Jansen, his upper lip
curled into a slight snarl. He took a cutter for a strike, stared at a slider for a
ball, whacked a slider foul, spit on a cutter just off the plate, stared at another to
run the count full, fouled off a slider and trotted to first after Jansen bounced a
slider for Ball 4.
RankingeveryWorldSeriesinhistory
WhichWorldSeriesisthebestever?SamMillerjudgesall115FallClassics.Story»
ESPN+:RankingtheWorldSerieschamps
It wasn't the worst outcome. In the previous inning, Phillips had entered as a
pinch runner for Ji-Man Choi, who himself had come into the game as a pinch
hitter. Under normal circumstances, the Rays might have pinch hit for Phillips,
but the only bat left was catcher Michael Perez, whose career numbers are
worse than Phillips'. The Rays are here in large part because manager Kevin
Cash so astutely leverages his roster and makes use of his 28 players, but to say
that with the game on the line the Rays wanted Phillips at the plate would be
some kind of revisionism. This is playoff baseball. It's the same reason Taylor,
who had last played center field Sept. 12, found himself there in the ninth
inning. Cody Bellinger, the Dodgers' usual center fielder, had to DH because his
back tightened up before the game, and Roberts had pinch hit for his
replacement, A.J. Pollock, with Joc Pederson, whose single in the seventh
pushed them ahead 6-5. The move looked deft until it didn't.
Before it was clear Phillips would even bat, Paul Hoover, the Rays' field
coordinator, had told him that he was going to win the game. Rodney Linares,
the Rays' third-base coach who had managed Phillips when he was a highly
touted prospect in the Houston Astros system, pulled down his mask after
Phillips stared at a ball and then two strikes and yelled: "Just swing the bat,
kid!"
On the fourth pitch, Phillips swung. It was a 92 mph cutter, middle-in, where
Phillips likes it. Never mind that in his career with two strikes he was 22-for-
205, a .107 hitter. Never mind that he hadn't registered a hit since Sept. 25, two
days before the end of the regular season. Never mind that he had logged only
two plate appearances in October. Never mind that he had taken only 10 swings
in the batting cage behind the Rays' dugout to prepare for the biggest at-bat of
his life. Never mind that the ball left his bat at only 82.8 mph.