The joy and pain that define baseball were in full force in Rays' incredible Game 4 win

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida -- A long hibernation is coming to Major League Baseball, a winter of discontent, and so what happened here Tuesday night was deeply appreciated, a reminder of the game's unending ability to make us feel something. It is joy and it is pain and it is surprise and it is excitement and it is nausea and a million other things all at once.

"It's life," Yandy Diaz said.

The 35-year-old was standing in the middle of the Tampa Bay Rays' clubhouse, still gobsmacked by what had unfolded over the previous 4 hours, 20 minutes, appropriate for a baseball game that left the Rays feeling plenty high. Their season looked dead, the World Series lost in embarrassing fashion, the Milwaukee Brewers ready to dogpile at Tropicana Field. And then the Rays remembered who they are at the precise moment they needed to, summoned the best of themselves and saved their season with a 4-3 victory in Game 4 that kept the Brewers from winning their first championship and ensured the Rays would live to see another day.

"We have tomorrow," Diaz said. "We have a new day. We have life."

Life coursed through the Trop on Tuesday. For the first three games of the series, the Rays did not resemble the team that carved through the American League during the regular season and playoffs. They played sloppy ball and committed uncharacteristic errors and looked entirely overmatched by a Milwaukee team brute-forcing its way into history. The Brewers had swept the Dodgers, and now they were going to do the same to the Rays, and nothing was stopping them.

Not after the top of the 12^th inning, when both teams had blown through their top relievers and Cooper Pratt stepped to the plate to face Rays left-hander Ian Seymour. Pratt is a 22-year-old rookie. He is from Mississippi, doesn't drink, doesn't curse. He just loves playing baseball. And on the first pitch he saw in the 12^th, Pratt hammered it into the left-field stands, his fourth hit of the night a backbreaking home run that left the Brewers a half-inning from a championship the city of Milwaukee and state of Wisconsin have spent 57 years trying to secure.

"I hit the thing and I was like, oh my gosh. That's gone," Pratt said. "I was just trying not to strike out. That was probably one of the coolest swings of my life."

For the previous 11 innings, these two teams -- loaded with power arms, filled with speed, stocked with contact ability -- had gone back and forth in a tight, taut ballgame, and now the World Series was about to be won on the fourth hit of the day by a kid who wasn't even in the big leagues until June.

What's funny about the game, though, is its ability to take one remarkable moment and watch it get one-upped minutes later. That is life. That is baseball. That is feeling like you're on top of the world. That is the pain of tumbling from that perch into a pit of despair.

That pit, for the Brewers, started with what registers to the team as one of the more grievous sins: an error with no outs. Junior Caminero, the Rays' most dangerous hitter, rolled over a ground ball to third baseman Joey Ortiz, who's sure-handedness and reliability is matched by Jake Bauers at first base. Ortiz skipped the throw. Bauers couldn't pick it. And the tying runner was on base.

"I was just ... I don't even ... it's all kind of a blur at this point," said Rays catcher Liam Hicks, who followed Caminero by bouncing a single to left, leaving runners on first and third with no outs. "We've done this all year. We haven't this series, but it's always there."

When Rays outfielder Jonny DeLuca strode to the plate, the Brewers' infield came in -- and DeLuca smashed a Shane Drohan pitch right back up the middle. The game was tied. Then Chandler Simpson, the ultimate speedster, poked a ball up the chute to load the bases. Up came Ben Williamson, another pinch hitter deployed by Rays manager Kevin Cash, and he did not hesitate.

One pitch. One swing. One improbable win.

"That's magic right there," Rays utilityman Ryan Vilade said.

Whether it was natural or supernatural, Tampa Bay found itself at the right time. The state of Wisconsin was preparing to drown itself double-fisting Miller Lite and Spotted Cow. And the Rays delayed the party for at least one more day.

"It was hard to sleep last night," Pratt said. "It's probably going to be a little harder tonight."

Outside of the Brewers' clubhouse, outside of Wisconsin, the slumber following Game 4 would be nothing but glorious. As much as games like that imbue viewers and listeners and followers and die-hards and casuals alike with the reminder that nothing beats playoff baseball, they also take a chunk out of everyone. The ride is the joy. The ride is the pain.

And it's why, for anyone who's simply a fan of baseball, Game 4 resonated so deeply. On the one-year anniversary of the Dodgers and Blue Jays' 18-inning World Series sojourn, Game 4 could have sent the game into the coming lockout on a bitter note. Impressive though a sweep may have been for the Brewers, none of the previous games featured something as dramatic as Pratt's homer ... which was then one-upped minutes later.

Thankfully, baseball is still here, for at least one more day, before the cold realities of trying to grab as much money as possible shut down the sport for ... who knows how long? Game 4 was everything baseball is, everything baseball can be. It is, like Diaz said, life. And that life is being taken from you, sooner than later.

So enjoy Game 5. It probably won't be as dramatic. It might crown a champion. It might send the World Series, improbably, back to Milwaukee. Baseball is the sport of infinite possibilities, of endless outcomes, and all it took was one game to remind that and to salvage the season for one more day.