Rob Schumacher/The Republic / USA TODAY NETWORK
This World Series is off to a brilliant start in terms of competition and drama.
This isn’t going to be a discussion about television ratings because the ratings for this season’s World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Texas Rangers aren’t going to affect your life or my life, either. Instead, the focus should be on what happened between the lines in Game 1 and if you were a neutral fan then this was a treat to watch.
For all the hand-wringing about how boring this matchup was going to be, the two teams who played didn’t seem to get the memo for the first game. This was a back-and-forth affair that saw the Rangers draw first blood with a strong opening inning that was also a continuation of The Adolis Garcia Show that has been running all Postseason. As it turned out, this was just the opening act of this particular episode for Garcia but we’ll get to that later.
The Diamondbacks proved that they belonged here and responded in kind with a three-run inning in the third to take the lead. The major blow in this inning was struck by Corbin Carroll, who once again reminded everybody in baseball what’s brought him to this lofty position as one of the most exciting young players in baseball. His triple that flew past Leody Tavares tied the game and then he gave Arizona the lead by blazing home on a ground ball that would’ve been an out in a normal situation. This wasn’t a normal situation and Corbin Carroll isn’t a normal player so instead a run was scored.
Texas immediately responded in their half of the third inning to tie the game on a bases-loaded walk but it wouldn’t take long for the Diamondbacks to seize back control of the game. Tommy Pham announced his presence on the grand stage with a no-doubter to left field in the fourth inning and then Ketel Marte’s double to center in the fifth inning gave Arizona the breathing room that’s afforded with a two-run lead. The score stayed 5-3 down the stretch as Arizona’s bullpen attempted to do what they’ve done all month by getting the lead and locking games down in the latter stages.
It seemed like the formula was going to work once Paul Sewald got the ball for the ninth inning. Sewald had been perfect over eight previous appearances this October — when the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies saw him, it was over. When the Rangers saw him though, it was showtime. Corey Seager already has a track record of delivering massive Postseason hits at Globe Life Field (both in this Postseason and back in the “bubble” in 2020) and he added to that in the most high-profile way possible as he took the first pitch he saw from Sewald with a man on and one out and sent it flying into a delirious crowd to tie the game up at five runs apiece before extra innings.
Even with the regular season ghost runner rule in effect, extra innings are usually a tense affair even in the most mundane of circumstances. The intensity is ratcheted up tenfold once you throw in the fact that this is the World Series that we’re talking about. The two extra innings that these teams played today may as well have taken the emotional toll of ten innings. Still, if there was any prime candidate who was ready to break the ice and deliver an emotional release that the home fans were ready for, it would have been Adolis García.
García has had himself a career year this season and he’s added to that by going on a run of a lifetime in the Postseason. With that being said, he had gone 0-for-4 up until he came up to bat in the eleventh inning. It would’ve been understandable if Arizona’s strong bullpen had made it 0-for-5 in order to keep the game going long into Friday night and very early Saturday morning in Arlington. Still, García wasn’t going to be quiet forever and unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, he wasn’t going to be quiet all night, either.
Adolis García worked his way into a 3-1 count against Miguel Castro and then the moment happened — García got a sinker from Castro that didn’t sink enough and stayed in the zone. García has been incredibly dangerous against pitches in the middle of the strike zone and this was right where he wanted it to be. He got a hold of it and blasted it opposite field into the seats for a walk-off dinger to give the Rangers the opening win of the World Series and turn Globe Life Field upside down in the process.
The complaints about this matchup’s lack of name recognition and star power were always a bit lame and boring to acknowledge but it was also as if both teams were trying their best to fight back against those criticisms. Granted, we all know that punditry is probably the last thing on the minds of those players while they’re out there but at the same time, this was the type of game that this season’s World Series needed. This could end up being a flash in the pan and we get three-to-six more duds from here on out or this could just be the start of a classic World Series that’s on par with the modern epics that we’ve seen from 2016, 2001 and 1991. Either way, these two teams have demanded all of our attention for at least another game. The Rangers may have won the first game of this year’s World Series but the baseball world as a whole was the winner of Game 1.
