CLEVELAND -- For nearly an hour Thursday night, the New York Yankees had seemingly overcome a bout of sloppy baseball to pull within a win of the World Series in jaw-dropping, crowd-silencing, totally bonkers fashion.
Down two runs with two outs in the eighth inning, the Yankees were tasked to solve Emmanuel Clase, the best closer in baseball, to give themselves a chance to take a 3-0 series lead. In 74 regular season appearances, the fireballer allowed five earned runs. The Detroit Tigers got to him once in the AL Division series -- before he shut them down again in multi-inning appearances in the next two games.