Seager ties it, Garcia ends it in wild Rangers win

ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers needed a night like this, a game not to wipe away the trauma of Oct. 27, 2011 — nothing can do that — but to remind them that for all of the heartbreak and anguish and despair baseball provides, it likewise offers another game, another chance, another moment to write a new sort of history.

Twelve years to the day after they lost what many consider the best game in World Series history, the Rangers played in another. And though it did not exceed its predecessor in drama, it nevertheless overflowed with it and started the 119th World Series in exceptional fashion. Two innings after Corey Seager smashed a score-tying home run to send the game into extras, Adolis Garcia, the hottest hitter on the planet, sliced an opposite-field walk-off home run into the right-field stands to give the Rangers a 6-5 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Game 1 of the this World Series was not Game 6 in 2011, when the Rangers were a strike from their first championship, only for St. Louis’ David Freese to play Seager and Garcia, forcing extra innings and then ending it single-handedly. Still, it was a terse, taut, exceedingly well-played baseball game between two teams that surprised the world when they won their leagues — and more than proved their worthwhileness in Game 1.

Garcia, the 30-year-old who earlier in the game had tied Freese for the most RBIs in a single postseason with 21, broke the record on a 97-mph sinker from right-hander Miguel Castro in the 11th inning that ran over the plate and into his unstoppable bat. Garcia is coming off an American League Championship Series in which he hit five home runs and drove in 15 runs and now has homered in five consecutive games, one shy of the postseason record.

It was the first walk-off home run in a Game 1 of the World Series since Kirk Gibson limped around the bases in 1988.

“He’s just a bad man,” Rangers reliever Dane Dunning said. “Wow. That’s all I can really say. He’s just — he’s that guy.”

If not for Seager, Garcia’s moment wouldn’t have been possible. The World Series MVP in 2020 with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seager has a penchant for these sorts of performances. His home run off Cristian Javier early in Game 7 of the ALCS propelled the Rangers past the Astros, and facing a pitcher with a similar arm slot and difficult-to-hit fastball — Diamondbacks closer Paul Sewald — Seager deposited a first-pitch fastball deep into the right-field stands with one on and one out in the ninth inning and Texas trailing 5-3.

“Big-time players do big-time things in big-time moments,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. “He came through. I’m still trying to figure out — I haven’t seen the video and the data if we hit our spot or not, but he just clipped us. He got us.”

Sewald did hit his spot. He hadn’t given up a home run on a fastball that high in the zone since 2021. But then Seager is no ordinary hitter.

“When he goes,” said Jordan Montgomery, the Rangers’ starter in Game 2, “we go.”

Seager went to the sort of place Friday night reserved for legends. After the Rangers scored two runs off Arizona starter Zac Gallen in the first inning, the Diamondbacks had taken control in the middle innings, tagging Nathan Eovaldi for five runs with their go-go offense screaming around the bases seemingly at will. The Diamondbacks, underdogs for their fourth consecutive series this October, looked the part of spoiler.

During the regular season, Texas was 0-44 when trailing by two or more runs entering the ninth inning. So it’s no surprise that upon making contact with Sewald’s 94 mph heater, Seager unleashed a scream that was soon mirrored by the 42,472 in attendance at Globe Life Field.

“Isn’t it cool, man, because of our perception of him — stoic, robotic — and then you get to see where his value system is at,” Rangers offensive coordinator Donnie Ecker said. “It’s in championships. It’s not in stats, it’s in championships. So I think that’s what, when his emotion comes out, it’s telling you: This is what I really care about. It’s winning it all.”

Sewald offered credit toward Seager for getting on top of his tough-to-hit fastball and said: “There’s no worse feeling in this game than being a closer and blowing a save opportunity at the last second.” Doing so in this fashion — leading by multiple runs entering the bottom of the ninth in a World Series game — is exceedingly rare. Of the 229 times a team has held such an advantage, it has won 225. One loss was Oct. 27, 2011. And the other three were by the Diamondbacks: two in the 2001 World Series and Game 1 Friday night.

“It’s like the script’s written for [Seager],” Rangers rookie third baseman Josh Jung said. “I mean, it’s truly incredible the at-bats he puts together, night in and night out, in the big spots, the big situations. And when he was coming up there, I was like, well, don’t throw him a strike or something cool is going to happen. And lo and behold, first pitch, there he goes.”

As much as they believe in Seager, the Rangers are beginning to regard Garcia in the same fashion. In addition to his RBI record, he is now tied for the second-most home runs in a postseason with eight, behind only his good friend Randy Arozarena, who hit 10 for the Tampa Bay Rays during the expanded 2020 postseason.

“It was just a matter of who’s going to do it,” Rangers first baseman Nate Lowe said. “Of course it’s him now. I sat in the bubble in 2020 and watched Randy just tear it apart. Randy and Adolis are really good friends. I know they are. So for Randy to now have the homer record and for Adolis to have the RBI record? It’s fitting.”

Not as fitting as Oct. 27 being a day of redemption for the Rangers. For 63 years, they have existed, and 62 of them have ended in disappointment. If Game 1 was any indication, they’re a quarter of the way to writing a new kind of history.