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The Rays have a chance to make (more) history

Baseball history is long. Basically everything has happened at least once. Except, that is, a comeback in the World Series for a team down three games to zero.

Of the first 25 teams that have ever fallen into such a Fall Classic hole, none came all the way back to win it all. None forced a Game 7. None forced a Game 6. Only four avoided the sweep to even play a Game 5.

The Rays, the 26th such team to find themselves on the ignominious end of a 3-0 start to the World Series, at least have done that much.

They lost each of the first two games in Milwaukee with the tying run standing on third base for the final out. They returned to Tampa, where they enjoyed the AL’s best home record in the regular season, to find Tropicana Field overrun with Milwaukee fans and got embarrassed in a blowout.

At that point, history said they should probably just pack it in.

Instead they battled for 12 innings to keep their season alive and in the end won with a barrage of singles that culminated with the last man off the bench pinch-hitting for a game-winning RBI.

“We got a lot of fight in us,” Chandler Simpson, who has flashed his vastly improved outfield defense through the series while running rampant on the basepaths, said on the Fox broadcast after the game.

“We gonna keep fighting to the end, the last inning, the last out, the last play, the last pitch. We’re gonna keep fighting like we did tonight.”

The Brewers – the best team in baseball the past two regular seasons – are fantastic, but a sweep would have obfuscated just how close a matchup this series could, and should, be – and was for at least one night (and into the wee hours of the next morning). Tampa is still on the brink.

On Wednesday, though, they get to try to do something no team has ever done before.