Somewhere in a clubhouse in St. Petersburg this weekend, a pitcher is getting ready to face the team that raised him. Freddy Peralta pitched his first eight seasons in Milwaukee and was the Brewers' ace for years. The Brewers traded him to the Mets in January, and on Monday night at Tropicana Field he will start Game 3 of the World Series against the Brewers, wearing the wrong uniform, with the series and maybe the season on his right arm.
That is where baseball stands on this last Sunday in October. The Brewers lead the Rays two games to none. They won both at American Family Field, 3-2 on Friday and 5-4 on Saturday, by a total of two runs. Neither franchise has ever won a World Series. One of them will by Halloween, and right now it looks a good deal more like the one from Wisconsin.
It has been a strange and lovely Series so far, old-fashioned in the best way. Game 1 had no home runs. It had a triple, a stolen base, a throw from the catcher, and a ninth inning that ended twice. Christian Yelich tripled to center in the first inning to score Jackson Chourio, and William Contreras singled Yelich home. Jacob Misiorowski, 24 years old, gave up one run in five innings. According to the BBC, he became the youngest pitcher since 1997 to win a World Series opener, and he threw a pitch at 103.5 miles an hour, the fastest recorded in a World Series since tracking began in 2008.
Then came the ninth. Trevor Megill, protecting a 3-1 lead, gave up one-out singles to Jonathan Aranda and Chandler Simpson. The Rays pulled a double steal, Junior Caminero walked to load the bases, and Liam Hicks hit a ground ball to the right side. Brice Turang ranged to his left and threw to Cooper Pratt at second. The umpires called a game-ending double play. Fireworks went off and the Brewers ran onto the field. Then the replay showed that Pratt's right foot had come off the bag, a run scored, and everyone had to go back to work. Megill struck out Jonny DeLuca on a 2-2 pitch with the tying and winning runs in scoring position. The Rays went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position that night.
Saturday was worse for Tampa Bay, because Saturday started so well. Pratt, the 22-year-old rookie shortstop, threw away Yandy Díaz's grounder to open the game. Simpson and Caminero drove in runs, Hicks hit a two-run homer, and five batters in, the Rays led 4-0 behind Drew Rasmussen, their best pitcher. Milwaukee's starter, the rookie Logan Henderson, had never allowed more than three runs in any of his 25 career starts. One of the four runs was unearned.
The Brewers do not seem to mind four-run deficits. They were down 4-0 to the Dodgers in the game that won them the pennant, too. They got two back in the first on hits by Contreras and Garrett Mitchell. They got one more in the fourth on an Aranda error, and they wore Rasmussen down to 89 pitches in three and two-thirds innings, his shortest start since July. In the sixth, Chourio threw out Hicks at the plate from left field. The ball beat the slowest man on the Rays by roughly ten feet. Tampa Bay challenged and lost.
Then Sal Frelick led off the bottom of the sixth against a left-hander and hit the ball over the center-field wall. He had homered just once off lefties in 98 regular-season plate appearances, and it was his first home run in three months. "If we're down," Frelick said afterward, "we're not out."
In the seventh, Turang doubled, and Pratt, the same kid who had handed the Rays the first inning, slapped a sinker into right field to bring him home. Aaron Ashby got the save, though the Rays put the tying run on third in the ninth before he finished. That makes seven comeback wins in nine postseason victories for Milwaukee, by the AP's count. Pat Murphy calls these overlooked players his orange Life Savers, the flavor nobody reaches for first. The roll is nearly empty, and nobody is complaining.
The Rays did not get here by accident. They won 98 games, swept the Yankees, and finished off Cleveland in six with a 7-3 win on Oct. 19, 18 years to the day after the franchise's first pennant. In that game Caminero hit a two-run homer off Cade Smith's splitter, the first homer Smith had ever allowed on that pitch, and then took 38.7 seconds to get around the bases, the longest trot of the Statcast era. Díaz had guaranteed a win, and he hit a 416-foot homer to make sure. Peralta was the ALCS most valuable player, with one run allowed in 12 innings. That is quite a turn for a pitcher who had a 4.99 ERA in 22 starts for the Mets before they sent him to Tampa Bay on Aug. 2, the day before the trade deadline. MLB.com has him at 7-0 with an 0.89 ERA in his last 10 games.
So Monday matters about as much as a Game 3 can. Robert Gasser, a left-hander, starts for Milwaukee. First pitch is 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox. Of the 96 teams to take a 2-0 lead in a best-of-seven series, MLB.com's Adam McCalvy counts 80 that went on to win. The Brewers won 103 games and still play like underdogs, and the Rays are a low-payroll club that has to beat the man who used to pitch the Brewers' biggest games.
In the stands on Saturday was a 71-year-old who played shortstop for Milwaukee the last time it reached the World Series, in 1982. He has waited 44 years to see a Brewers team finish what his team started. If Peralta has his old stuff Monday night, he may have to wait a little longer. If he doesn't, the wait may be nearly over.