HOLE-Y HELL!
3-1 deficit leaves Yanks needing a minor miracle
BY THE time they cued up Sinatra, Yankee Stadium did looked like one of those games in mid-May when the rain has chased everyone away, when only close friends and family remain in the seats, huddled against the misery. For even the fiercest, most faithful members of the flock, as midnight came and midnight left, it was best to simply make a quick escape, to the Deegan or the Macombs Dam Bridge or the 4 train.
The chill that swirled around the ballpark all night, and especially at the end, had felt a little too much like winter.
Suddenly, it is the bottom of the baseball season for the Yankees, after 169 games and 107 victories. Suddenly, the Yankees’ toes are tickling the edge of the abyss. The Astros pounded them 8-3, but the Yankees beat themselves plenty, too, picking the worst possible time to turn in their worst fielding game of the year (four errors). And one more time in this series, the offense continued to sputter like a ’57 Chevy on a cold February morning.
“We played poorly, there’s no other way to explain it,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “We need to flush this immediately. We need to get over this and put our best foot forward and need to play a cleaner game.” They are down 3-1 in games in this best-of-seven American League Championship Series, and ffacingi some awfullyfll unfriendlyfidl odds. If they are going to buy themselves another day of summer, get themselves booked on an airplane bound for Houston, they’re going to have to beat Justin Verlander, who is either going to finish first or second in the AL Cy Young vote.
And even if they do, Verlander’s running mate, Gerrit Cole, will be waiting for them once they get to Texas. It is a most disagreeable task awaiting the Yankees, who for the second straight home game could muster very little, this time against an off-his-game Zack Greinke and a gaggle of Astros relievers.
Twice — bottom of the first, bottom of the fifth — they had the bases loaded and a chance to flex the offensive muscle that had defined so much of this journey through the 2019 season. They did scratch out a run in the first when Greinke walked Brett Gardner on four pitches, then struck out Gary Sanchez to strand three.
Four innings later they chased Greinke and had the sacks juiced and the 49,067 shoehorned into the Stadium juiced even more. But Ryan Pressly struck out Gleyber Torres and Edwin Encarnacion, the Astros exploded in their dugout, a celebration easily audible in the suddenly silent Stadium.
Soon enough, it was 6-1, and despite Sanchez’s two-run blast that finally provided proof of life for the Yankees catcher, the deed was done. The rest was garbage time. The folks fleeing to the exits had seen enough, and it was impossible to blame them.
“Stranger things have happened,” Boone said. “Much stranger.”
It is precisely the message he has to sell to his team. There have been other teams that came back ffrom a 1-133 deficit, andd ffor all theh overwhelming successes that’ve written the Yankees’ history books, an essential part of their heritage is that 3-0 lead they blew 15 years ago to Boston. It is a black mark on that history but a reminder that their manager’s words aren’t just Pollyanna pap.
Stranger things have happened. That’s fact. Can they happen again? “Our guys are studs,” he said. “They embrace the challenge. I can’t wait to see us go out and play our game.”
Still, his guys are running on fumes, leaking oil, and need to find a whole lot of answers in a short amount of time. Verlander awaits Friday. A year ago, more than a few of the Yankees grumbled at having to see the Red Sox celebrate their victory in the ALDS on Yankee
Stadium soil, having to hear the muffled roars leak down the hallway from the visitors’ clubhouse. Now they are in danger of enduring the exact same thing, hued in orange rather than crimson.
As an old October Yankee hero named Yogi once put it: It’s getting late early out there.
“Our backs are to the wall,” Boone conceded.
They are. Traces of winter were everywhere at the Stadium on Thursday, and it will shadow the proceedings Friday night, in what could be the last gasp of baseball season in New York City, and another sporting season ending shy of the Canyon of Heroes, added to a mounting heap of championship futility. Boone said stranger things have happened?
Well. They’d better start happening. Now.