Texas Rangers 11th-Inning HR Caps Rally To Doom Arizona D-Backs

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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 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 broke the most RBIs in a single postseason 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.

Get set for game 2 of the World Series on Saturday on ESPN 102.3/AM 1000 KSOO. Coverage begins at 6:00 PM.