ST. PETERSBURG -- The rebuilt Tropicana Field roof technically contained the Brewers. Absolutely nothing else has.
When the World Series shifted to St. Pete for Game 3 on Monday night, the Rays had faith that they had been beaten but not creamed in the Cream City, had belief that Freddy Peralta could shut down his old squad, had hope that they were one win away from reshaping the narrative of this Fall Classic.
Then came the eight-spot in a fifth inning that Peralta could not finish. Not just any eight-run outburst, but one that came entirely with two out.
The big inning that cemented the Brewers’ epic 10-1 victory and the one hit allowed in six scoreless innings from Milwaukee starter Robert Gasser made for the most extreme encapsulation yet of the way this team has demoralized opponents and made the postseason its personal playground on the increasingly likely path to a franchise-first title. Every Brewers starter reached base, eight of the nine drove in a run, and Jackson Chourio had four hits – one shy of tying the World Series single-game record – by the end of the fifth inning.
Milwaukee is up 3-0 in this best-of-seven. So not only is this club a win away from making Brewers history; it is a win away from joining the 1976 Reds -- the Big Red Machine – as the only clubs to sweep the LCS and World Series in succession (and the only one to do it since the LCS became a best-of-seven in 1985).
Call it Deep Brew, a baseball team as difficult to outwit as a chess-playing supercomputer.
Deep Brew has taken a Rays defense that was pretty much flawless in October and turned it into a mistake-prone mess. It has taken a Rays lineup oriented around contact and speed and turned it into a mostly silenced, sub-.200-swatting squad that keeps running into outs on the basepaths. It had Tampa Bay’s Ben Williamson fouling a ball off his own face.
It took that faith and hope and belief and poured a cold one all over it.