It was the first postseason game in history to end on a pickoff, according to STATS.
The Cardinals were down 4-2 when pinch-hitter Allen Craig hit a ball off the right-field wall with one out in the ninth. It would normally have been a double but Craig can barely run due to an ankle injury made worse when he scored on the obstruction play on Saturday.
Wong, a speedy rookie, pinch-ran for Craig. After Matt Carpenter popped up, the Cardinals had just the right man at the plate as the potential tying run in Carlos Beltran, among the best postseason hitters ever.
But perhaps inexplicably given the need for two runs, not one, Wong was leaning and was out easily on closer Koji Uehara's throw to first.
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny said Wong had been told that Uehara has a good move, and that he needed to be careful.
"And then he slipped and the slip cost him," Matheny said.
Boston manager John Farrell said it wasn't a play he called.
"That was on his own," Farrell said. "It was all on Uehara."
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Troublesome shoulder or not, Red Sox starter Clay Buchholz turned in a brief but effective start Sunday night, maybe just enough to turn around the World Series.
Buchholz used guile, not velocity, to keep St. Louis hitters off-stride and mostly in check in Game 4. He lasted just four innings but allowed only one run, and it was unearned, giving up three hits, striking out two and walking three, one intentional.
He didn't get the decision, but his gutsy performance was crucial in the Red Sox's 4-2 win to even the series 2-2 and ensure it will be decided in Boston.
Buchholz missed three months of the regular season with an injury to his right shoulder. Pitching in the AL championship series, he said the shoulder didn't feel quite right, like it was weak or fatigued. There was speculation about whether he could make the World Series start, his first.
He did, and he's a big reason the Red Sox have regained home-field advantage.
Not that it was easy. The Cardinals put two men on base in every inning but the 1-2-3 first against Buchholz. The only run they could push across against the 29-year-old right-hander came in the third when Matt Carpenter singled and hustled to second when center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury misplayed the ball, then scored on Carlos Beltran's single.
Buchholz, 12-1 with a 1.74 ERA in his abbreviated regular season, survived by mixing speeds and hitting the corners. His fastest pitch was clocked at 90 mph.
The Boston relievers were strong over the final five innings, except for one big scare.
Felix Doubront, who started 27 games in the regular season and was pitching on consecutive days for just the fourth time in his four-year career and the first time since Sept. 19-20, 2011, was perfect through 2 2-3 innings but gave up a two-out seventh-inning double to pinch-hitter Shane Robinson.
