2020 WORLD SERIES
Fox, 8:00 p.m. ET
This may end up being my favorite World Series since 1960. The first three games of this 2020 series were won by whichever team scored first. The Los Angeles Dodgers did it twice, the Tampa Bay Rays once, and neither team surrendered the lead once establishing it early. But then came last night’s remarkably tense Game 4. Runs scored in eight consecutive half-innings. Four lead changes in all. And in the bottom of the ninth, with the Dodgers leading 7-6 and the Rays down to the final at-bats, it all came down to Brett Phillips, who only had been traded to the Rays from the Kansas City Royals in August. He’d only gotten three hits in a Rays uniform since then, and didn’t play during the league championship series – yet here he was, coming up to bat because of so many player substitutions during a super-strategic duel of managers’ wits. Ninth inning. Two outs. Runners on first and second. He took ball one, then the next two pitches were strikes. That quickly, the count was 1-2 with two outs, and one more strike would give the Dodgers the victory, and a 3-1 lead in the series. But Phillips got a hit, drove in one run – and then, because of a wildly improbable series of events later during that same play (the second baserunner falling down, literally head over heels, after rounding third at full speed, then the Dodgers catcher muffing the relay catch, allowing the sprawled-out runner to get up, scramble and dive to home plate and score the winning run), drove in another. I loved the madness of that, and the Little League chaos after so many innings of super-professional baseball, and the reactions afterward of the Rays players, none of whom looked or acted any older than 10. But most of all, I loved Phillips’ comment in the press conference after the game, when he aimed a message directly al all the kids who were watching. “Keep dreaming big,” he told them. “These opportunities – they’re closer than you think. Things like this happen.” Not very often, but wow, when they do, they’re fun to watch. So how, now, do you miss tonight’s Game 5, with the 2020 World Series now tied at two games apiece?