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Terry Francona did not give a Knute Rockne speech after his 2004 Red Sox went down, and went down hard, in Game 3 of the ALCS. The Yankees had just steamrolled his team by a 19-8 count, and the home clubhouse in the bowels of Fenway Park felt as grim as the city morgue.
The manager, a rookie in Boston after four losing years in Philly, was not concerned about the deafening silence in the room.
“After a game like that you’ll always be quiet because you’re respecting the loss,” Francona told The Post on Sunday. “The next day we came to the ballpark and [Kevin] Millar was yelling, and my players were the same as they always were, which to me was a really good sign.”
With Millar and a surplus of fellow free spirits, those Red Sox called themselves “Idiots.” But they were smart enough to understand that baseball is wildly unpredictable, and that if they could just stay in the fight a little longer, something crazy might happen.
Like becoming the only baseball team to ever win a best-of-seven series after losing the first three games.
Francona was on the phone Sunday morning to discuss how his Red Sox pulled off the greatest comeback of all, with the Yankees, of all teams, needing to match the feat 18 years later to advance to the World Series.
Of course, these Yanks just knocked out Francona’s Guardians in the Division Series. Asked if he thought Aaron Boone’s team was good enough to make the seemingly impossible possible, and take four straight from a Houston team that has owned it, Francona said it wasn’t his business to give a direct answer.
“Anybody can be good enough,” he said. “It’s a long shot, but anybody can do it. I’ve always told people that you’ve got to be a little lucky, and then good enough to take advantage of that luck.”
The word “lucky” has been a triggering ALCS adjective ever since Yankees Game 2 starter Luis Severino used it to describe the Astros and the open-roof impact on Alex Bregman’s homer and Aaron Judge’s would-be homer in Minute Maid Park.
