COMEBACK KINGS
Yankees rally for thrilling Game 4 win to tie series
When it was over and Team Comeback had pulled off its most deathdefying feat yet in this thrill-ride of a postseason, you walked away thinking not so much about the clutch hits from Aaron Judge or Gary Sanchez, or even Chase Headley’s desperate crawl into second base. No, you walked away thinking about what Yankee Stadium felt like on this night. What it sounded like. I’ve never seen it so bonkers, to the point where it felt a lot like the old place across the street that all of New York speaks of with such reverence now. Maybe it was like this at some point in October 2009, the first year for the new place when the Yankees won a championship, but I don’t remember a night when everyone in the clubhouse was talking about it the way they were after coming back late from down 4-0 to essentially save the season. “You can’t hear anything,’’ Judge said in describing what he felt. “You’re trying to talk to the person next to you, but it’s deafening. It’s crazy.” Perhaps Yankee fans had to experience a few empty Octobers to bring back the passion. Of course, after watching expensive, aging players underachieve in recent years, they also seemed to be just waiting to fall in love with a group like these Baby Bombers. Whatever the factors, Joe Girardi likened it to the glory days of the late ’90s. “I see things that I haven’t seen in a while and it reminds me a lot of when I was playing here,” Girardi said. “I just feel like the fans are back.”
Apparently those old ghosts, the ones that Derek Jeter once famously told Aaron Boone would show up at just the right time in the building across the street, are back as well.
How else do you explain Tuesday’s 6-4 win over the Astros that tied this ALCS at 2-2, the most improbable of all the comebacks in this postseason?
Jeter is no longer around to talk about it, but as a kid from the Jersey shore who was in the old building for some of those wins, Todd Frazier surely knows about Yankee aura and mystique.
“I’m telling you, the Yankee gods were watching,” Frazier said with a big smile. “No other way to put it.
“Anything goes in this stadium. I’ve been a part of it as a fan and a player. We knew we still had a chance.” Surely they were telling
themselves that, but by the top of the seventh inning on Tuesday it felt as if doom had settled over the Stadium. It felt as if this feel-good Yankee run was finally hitting the wall.
Staring at a 3-1 deficit in the series would have daunting enough. But, worse, the grim reaper would be waiting to finish them off.
You know, the guy with long beard. Goes by the name of Dallas Keuchel.
He’s pitching Game 5 on Wednesday, and he still represents an enormous hurdle for the Yankees, because going back to Houston trailing 3-2 in the series would make them a longshot to pull it out, no matter how many lives it seems they have in this postseason.
But facing Keuchel and his lifetime 1.09 ERA against the Yankees in an elimination game was something everybody in the home dugout wanted to avoid.
Girardi admitted, “It’s always in the back of your head — you know he’s pitching tomorrow.”
Frazier even said it crossed his mind when the Astros took the 4-0 lead. “I thought about it” he said. “I thought, ‘man, this is going to be a real uphill battle now.’ ”
In truth, even at 2-2 it still feels like the Yankees have more climbing to do, because of Keuchel, and let’s face it, Justin Verlander put them in his back pocket a few days ago as well — he’s waiting in Game 6 in Houston.
But, really, would anyone bet against these Yankees right now? Their confidence is soaring after this latest comeback, and indeed they proved what scouts were saying before the series began — that if they got into the Astros’ bullpen, look out.
Judge gave them life, first, with a solo home run leading off the seventh after Lance McCullers shut them out for six innings, and then practically everyone had a part in working over three relievers, including closer Ken Giles.
Judge had the key hit in the four-run eighth as well, a game-tying double on a 3-2 slider, an impressive piece of hitting for a guy who has chased so many breaking balls in this postseason.
That hit set off pandemonium and then Gary Sanchez’s two-run double sent the Stadium into convulsions.
It all happened so fast. How exactly? And what if Headley hadn’t barely gotten his fingertips in at second after his wipeout going around first?
So many moments. So much noise. Frazier said it best:
“People will be talking about this game for a long time.”
Longer if they go to the World Series, but either way, I’ll remember it as the night the new Stadium felt like the old place.