Who will play Kevin Millar on Tuesday evening? Jazz Chisholm Jr.? Chisholm has Millar’s chattiness. Maybe it was Gerrit Cole. Cole is a loud and passionate leader. He has been known to take a bullet or two for teammates or managers.
Can the Yankees turn on Nick Swisher?
Swisher certainly will.
“Don’t let them win tonight. This is a great game. They have to win because if they win, we’ll have Cole back in Game 5 and then Rodon will make Game 6 and then you can take that cheating stuff and go to sleep. Don’t let the Yanks … Win. This. Game.”
Close the gloves for emphasis.
Twenty years later, it took two things for the Yankees to tip the scales of baseball justice. Twenty years after becoming the first – and still only – baseball team to take a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven reverse, it would be a good time to channel the hated Red Sox, find something in themselves Tuesday night. .
That’s when he would report to be down 3-0 in this 120th World Series. Another arch-rival, the Dodgers, happily put themselves in a hole on Monday thanks to Freddie Freeman and finally shut it down thanks to a valiant pitching performance from Walker Buhler and his supporting cast of relievers en route to a 4-2 wash- laundry.
Now, they have to do the worst thing imaginable, close their eyes, bite down, swallow harder, and … imitate the Red Sox.
And the truth is, it doesn’t have to be painful, or terribly uncomfortable, as Millar says. More importantly, they need to act like the Red Sox, the second time around. First, honor the promise of every manager who has ever seen a team fall into an 0-3 hole and try to have four one-game winning streaks and not one four-game winning streak.
Others are more obvious.
Through three games of the 2004 ALCS, David Ortiz had destroyed himself, getting six hits, but five singles and none left the yard. Half of those came in Game 3, a 19-8 massacre that was garbage time almost from the start. But in Games 4 through 7, this is Ortiz: .316/.409/.790. That’s a 1.199 OPS. That includes home runs in Games 4, 5 and 7, and a career-high nine RBIs.
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It’s the fourth type of game Aaron Judge specializes in. He has gotten into that type of play dozens of times, plays that defy explanation and take your breath away. Some of those times, he came right out of his batting slump to do the same.
The Yankees need that.
It’s no longer enough to say the Yankees can use that. It is no longer feasible to build an argument that the Yankees can somehow survive in this Series by carrying Judge instead of the other way around. It’s not enough to praise Judge for taking “good at-bats,” as he did in the eighth inning, when he drew a six-pitch walk off LA righty Ryan Brasier, fighting back from 1st and 2nd counts.
Not. Not good enough.
The Yankees need more. They need Hakim to get hot – and red-hot, if possible. Maybe that’s just a sign that the Yankees really are a flawed roster that relies heavily on one player, even if another superstar, Juan Soto, has done well.
You know what?
You can talk when the season is over. You can wring your hands about in a week – or a few days, if it doesn’t turn around quickly. Aaron Boone thought of several massages in his row during the 5 ½ hour flight home, from takeoff to having to fasten his seat belt, making sure he raised the tray table and making sure his seat was on the right side and locked into position.
He did one of those: subbing Jose Trevino in for struggling rookie catcher Austin Wells, 4-for-41 with 18 strikeouts in the postseason. He’s thinking of making a few others, though he refuses to share them. One that will be defensible: replace Hakim and Soto in order. If nothing else, just to get a new look.
“It’s the World Series, no,” he finally decided. “This is our man (Hakim), and there is pressure in the Series, no matter where you go. He is our man and we believe he will do it.
Yankees fans treated him well, as expected, and they will Tuesday night, of course, even though his 0-for-3 lowered his World Series average to .083 (without a homer) and his postseason average to .140. He’s out of season now, and the Yankees are running out of time. Twenty years ago, in the same predicament, David Ortiz supported Kevin Millar’s oath with the bat.
The Yankees don’t need an oath. Only bat Hakim. STAT, as they say in “ER.”