A ring sailed right over his head, and eight years later, Nelson Cruz is still trying to grab it.

Cruz, the slugging designated hitter for the Minnesota Twins, was the right fielder for the Texas Rangers in 2011, one out away from a championship in Game 6 of the World Series in St. Louis. With two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Cardinals’ David Freese tripled off the right-field wall to tie the game. Cruz raced back more than 10 strides and leapt for it, but his efforts were in vain and the Rangers went on to lose the game and the series.

Cruz is 39 now, and hit 41 home runs this season to bring his career total to 401. His efforts helped lift the Twins to the American League Central title and a meeting with the Yankees in a division series. Cruz hit another homer — his 17th career postseason home run — off James Paxton in the third inning of the Twins’ Game 1 loss on Friday.

Cruz has not returned to the World Series since 2011, and he could not forget his near miss if he tried.

“I mean, it’s there,” he said last month, before a game in Boston. “You cannot erase that from your mind. It’s something that, as a player, you know that you’re that close to winning something that important and you weren’t able to do it — and not only one time, it was two times.”