ST. PETERSBURG, Florida -- A long hibernation is coming to Major League Baseball, a winter of discontent, and so what happened here Tuesday night was deeply appreciated, a reminder of the game's unending ability to make us feel something. It is joy and it is pain and it is surprise and it is excitement and it is nausea and a million other things all at once.

"It's life," Yandy Diaz said.

The 35-year-old designated hitter was standing in the middle of the Tampa Bay Rays ' clubhouse, still gobsmacked by what had unfolded over the previous 4 hours, 20 minutes, appropriate for a baseball game that left the Rays feeling plenty high. Their season looked dead, the World Series lost in embarrassing fashion, the Milwaukee Brewers ready to dogpile at Tropicana Field.…