The New York Yankees will attempt to keep their season alive and avoid a sweep at the hands of the Houston Astros in Sunday night’s Game 4 of the American League Championship Series. (Weather permitting, anyway.) The Yankees, who will need to win four consecutive games to advance to the World Series, are looking for inspiration from an unexpected source ahead of Game 4: the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
Manager Aaron Boone told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch that mental skills coach Chad Bohling had passed around highlight videos of the 2004 Red Sox on Sunday morning. Additionally, ESPN analyst Eduardo Perez did a video call with David Ortiz, a member of that team, during Boone’s pre-game media availability session in his office.
Those Red Sox are the only team in Major League Baseball history to ever come back to win a best-of-seven series in which they trailed by a 3-0 margin. What makes the Yankees looking to that club for motivation so funny (or awkward, depending on your perspective) is that the Red Sox are New York’s biggest rival and completed that comeback 18 years ago against the Yankees. These Yankees are, in a sense, finding hope in the failures of their spiritual predecessors.
Indeed, the Yankees won the first three games of that ALCS by a combined score of 32-16. The Red Sox then extra-inning affairs (Game 4 went 12 innings, Game 5 went 14 innings) before evening the series with a 4-2 victory in Game 6. The Red Sox would win Game 7 in a blowout, outsourcing the Yankees 10-3 en route to the pennant.
Now, history and probability are very much against the Yankees making a similar run versus these Astros. Again, those 2004 Red Sox are notable because they are the exception. Every single one of the other 38 teams to fall behind 3-0 lost the series: only eight of them were able to win Game 4 and avoid the sweep.
That’s all good and well, but, of course, similar things were written about the 2004 Red Sox. Unlikely events happen all the time — look no further than this story. Maybe the Yankees will become the second team to ever dig its way out of a 3-0 hole. And, who knows, maybe one day an Astros team will look to this series for inspiration.
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