The Texas Rangers must finish what they started in Game 1 of the World Series
PHOENIX (CBSNewsTexas.com) – Longtime baseball front office executive Jim Bowden called it one of the greatest games in World Series history. Not Texas Rangers history. World Series history.
What Corey Seager and Adolis Garcia did on Friday night on baseball's biggest stage was jaw dropping, even for a neutral observer like Bowden, who threw out names of World Series icons like Reggie Jackson, Kirk Gibson, Joe Carter, Bernie Carbo and Carlton Fisk as comparisons.
When Seager delivered the game tying two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1 against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the immediate eruption from an anxious, overflowing crowd at Globe Life Field was deafening. But it was the emphatic, animated and triumphant emotion displayed by the normally stoic Seager as he left the batter's box that spoke to the gravity of the moment. It was a scene straight out of "The Natural."
But what makes Seager's mammoth blast more memorable is what Adolis Garcia did two innings later. Garcia's 11th inning opposite field walk-off rocket to right to beat the D-backs, 6-5, capped one of the greatest postseason weeks of any player in any era. Setting the record for most postseason RBIs ever (22), Adolis finished off a three-game stretch in which he hit four homers and drove in 11 runs — in "must win" Games 6 and 7 of the ALCS and Game 1 of the World Series, no less.
But as euphoric as the Rangers were on Friday night, what happened on Saturday night was just as sobering. Arizona's 35-year-old Merrill Kelly, who five years ago won a Korean League championship, cooled off the Rangers bats, giving up one run on three hits and seven innings in a 9-1 Diamondback win that evened this series at 1-1.
So, now the Rangers try to continue their remarkable playoff run on the road, where they are unbeaten (8-0) this postseason. Texas must win at least one of the next three games to bring this series back to Arlington for Game 6 on Friday.
This looms as the biggest week in Texas Rangers club history. What happens now will determine just how historic those Game 1 homers truly were, and how iconic the names Seager and Adolis become in World Series lore, alongside Reggie, Gibson, Carter, Carbo, and Fisk.