A child born during the 2004 ALCS in which the Red Sox became the first baseball team to overcome a three games to none deficit to win a best-of-seven series can cast his or her first votes in an election next month.
A child born during the 2004 ALCS in which the Red Sox became the first baseball team to overcome a three games to none deficit to win a best-of-seven series can cast his or her first votes in an election next month.
So that’s the good news for the Yankees — they don’t have to look far, either on the calendar or within their franchise’s own history, for tangential evidence it is possible to mount a miracle comeback.
The bad news is nothing else about these Yankees indicates they can provide some fraternal redemption for those Yankees by giving them some room in the history books with a stunning comeback against the Astros over the next 96 hours.
The Yankees fell into a three games to none hole in the ALCS Saturday night, when they again failed to solve Cristian Javier and a cadre of relievers in a 5-0 loss.
“Obviously this isn’t ideal,” Anthony Rizzo said. “But we’ve just got to win tomorrow. It sucks tonight. It’s gonna suck and it’s gonna sting. Tomorrow when we wake up, we’ve just got to figure out a way to win.”
Similar words, perhaps minus the sucks, were probably uttered by players on the 39 previous teams to trail three games to none in a best-of-seven series. But there’s nothing apparent in their makeup or recent performance to indicate the Yankees can begin to make the Astros sweat by extending the series to Monday, never mind by actually winning the next four games against a team that hasn’t lost four straight since April.
Only four teams have fallen behind three games to none and extended the series to at least six games. The 1998 Braves, who fell to the Padres in the six games in the NLCS, and 2020 Astros, who lost to the Rays in seven games in the ALCS, were each three years removed from winning the World Series and still possessed the championship pedigree from those runs.
