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Correa's walk-off HR forces Game 6 in ALCS vs. Rays

Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images Sport / Getty

Needing a win to prolong their championship aspirations, the Houston Astros beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4-3 Thursday night to force a Game 6.

The victory came courtesy of a walk-off home run from Carlos Correa in the ninth inning. It's Correa's sixth homer of the postseason.

"I don’t want to go home yet," Correa said in a postgame interview with Lauren Shehadi on TBS. "We were down 0-3, and we had a players' meeting in the clubhouse and we said, 'We don’t wanna go home yet, so we should do something about it.' We're down 2-3, we've got a long way to go, but it's a good start."

Correa is the third player in MLB postseason history to have two walk-off homers, joining Bernie Williams and David Ortiz, according to James Smyth of YES Network.

Before taking the ninth-inning at-bat, Correa told Astros manager Dusty Baker he was thinking walk-off, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports.

In the battle of the bullpens, Ryan Pressly earned the win while Nick Anderson was hit with the loss.

With the game looking like it was headed for extras, Baker got presumptive Game 6 starter Framber Valdez warming in the bullpen. After not entering the game, Valdez will start Friday. The Rays will counter with ace left-hander Blake Snell.

"I prayed to my dad and my brother and I said, 'Lord, please let us walk off because if not, we've got to use Framber and we don't have Framber (for Game 6),'" Baker said after the game, according to Brian McTaggart of MLB.com. "Things couldn't have worked out any better."

It's the second night in a row the Astros faced elimination and won after falling behind 3-0 in the series to the American League's top seed.

Only one team has ever overcome a 3-0 deficit in Major League Baseball; the 2004 Boston Red Sox, who came back to beat the New York Yankees in the ALCS. The Red Sox went on to win the World Series that year, breaking an 86-year championship drought.

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