ST. PETERSBURG -- Ben Williamson has resuscitated the Rays.

Tampa Bay was just three outs away from elimination at the hands of the Brewers in Game 4 of the World Series before launching a stunning, 12th-inning rally to prevail 4-3 in a cinematic thriller Tuesday night at Tropicana Field.

With two aboard and Shane Drohan on the hill, Jonny DeLuca drove in the tying run with a single and Chandler Simpson singled to load the bases before Williamson came on as a pinch-hitter and stroked a ground ball to right to score pinch-runner Nick Fortes with the winning run. “Walking on Sunshine” blared on the speakers for a Rays team that somehow escaped the darkness.

There had been 16 previous walk-off wins in World Series history by a team facing elimination. Actually, 13 of them had been in extra innings and six had been in the 11th inning or later like this one. But the only previous team to do it when facing a sweep, like these Rays, was the 1910 Cubs.

The Brewers were trying to not only win the first title in franchise history but also become the first team to win nine in a row in the playoffs and the first team to sweep both a best-of-seven LCS and World Series. 

Just when it appeared rookie shortstop Cooper Pratt’s solo homer in the top of the 12th would launch the Brewers into the history books, the Rays found a way to survive for at least another day -- specifically Wednesday, when they’ll play their final home game of 2026 and hope to push this thing back to Milwaukee.

The Rays had played so poorly in this Series’ first three games that, in a time in the baseball calendar when a week feels like a month, you could be forgiven for forgetting how good they actually are. The defense, plate approach and aggressive-but-not-reckless baserunning that had defined their rise to the top of the AL East and their pursuit of the AL pennant had completely vanished. They beat themselves just as much as they had gotten beat in Games 1 and 2, and then they completely collapsed in Game 3.

So Tampa Bay did not have the luxury of thinking about winning four games or even one.

“Win an inning,” president of baseball operations Erik Neander said before Game 4.

They knew they had to start there, and they did. Specifically, they won the second inning, when a Simpson double had DeLuca motoring home all the way from first to give the Rays a 1-0 lead.