Now we know where the Braves went wrong. They did not have Will Smith on their roster.
The Newnan native became the first player in baseball history to win a World Series ring with three different teams in three straight years.
Smith, who attended Northgate High School, is a reliever with the Texas Rangers, who became World Series champions for the first time in their 63-season franchise history Wednesday night by beating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5 in Phoenix.
Smith pitched for the 2021 Braves in their World Series run, then joined the Houston Astros roster for the 2022 World Series but did not pitch. He has appeared in three postseason games this year for Texas, two in the World Series.
He made 60 appearances for the Rangers in the regular season.
And now he will have three big rings.
In the game, Nathan Eovaldi pitched six gutsy innings and Mitch Garver broke a scoreless tie with an RBI single in the seventh for the Rangers.
Marcus Semien homered late and Texas, held hitless for six innings by Zac Gallen, finished a record 11-0 on the road this postseason by capping the Fall Classic with three straight wins in the desert.
In his first season with the team, manager Bruce Bochy won his fourth title 13 years to the day after his first, which came in 2010 when the Giants beat the Rangers. He also won it all with San Francisco in 2012 and 2014.
One night after Texas took a 10-run lead by the third in a Game 4 snoozer, it finished baseball's third all-wild card Series by outlasting the Diamondbacks in a white-knuckle pitchers' duel, piling on four runs in the ninth for good measure.
Now that the Rangers have won their World Series title, there are only five franchises remaining without a championship: Colorado, Milwaukee, San Diego, Seattle and Tampa Bay.
Gallen took a no-hitter into the seventh before giving up an opposite-field single to World Series MVP Corey Seager, whose weak grounder found a hole. Rangers rookie Evan Carter — all of 21 years old — followed with a double into the right-center gap. Garver then delivered the first run, pumping his fist as a hard-hit grounder got through the middle of the infield to score Seager and make it 1-0.
Garver was 1 for 17 at the plate in the World Series before his huge hit.
“Everything I’ve ever worked for is for this moment,” Semien said. “Gallen was unbelievable tonight. But we came through. Once Corey got the first hit, everybody kind of woke up. Pitching was unbelievable."
The Rangers tacked on four more runs in the ninth to break open the game. Semien’s two-run homer off Paul Sewald made it 5-0. The outburst was typical of the Texas offense, which scored at least three runs in an inning 13 times this postseason.
It’s the first title for the Rangers, whose history dates back to 1961 when they were the expansion Washington Senators. They moved to Texas for the 1972 season and came agonizingly close to a World Series championship in 2011, needing just one strike on two occasions before eventually falling to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Now, after five stadiums, roughly two dozen managers and 10,033 games, the Rangers are champions.
It wasn’t easy. Texas led the AL West for a big chunk of the season, but coughed up the division title on the final day of the regular season to rival Houston. The Rangers also weathered injuries to key pieces, particularly ace pitcher Jacob deGrom.
That 1-0 loss in the regular-season finale at Seattle left the Rangers with the No. 5 seed in the AL playoffs and it sent them across the country to open the playoffs at Tampa Bay, part of two-week trip that took them to four cities — two on each coast. Then Texas got its revenge against Houston, winning a hard-fought series in seven games that brought them to the World Series.
Finally, the Rangers had to get past the Diamondbacks, who won just 84 games during the regular season but beat the Brewers, Dodgers and Phillies in a remarkable postseason run that finally fizzled.
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