NEW YORK — An entire stadium held its breath, fearing the worst, as the most powerful man in the MLB playoffs sputtered his way around third base like a broken-down jalopy.
Home plate was Giancarlo Stanton’s destination. A combination of forces — Teoscar Hernández’s rocket arm, Stanton’s molasses legs — ensured he would not reach it.
With his Yankees down three runs in the fourth inning of Game 3 of the World Series, Stanton had, moments before this sad dash, ripped a double to left for the first Yankees hit of the game. Two batters later, with two outs on the board, shortstop Anthony Volpe lofted a hit of his own, a soft line drive over the shortstop’s head. Ball touching turf presented the desperate home crowd with a glimmer of hope, a reason to cheer, a morsel of optimism.
Just 4.5 seconds later, that light was extinguished … likely for good.
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Stanton thudded down the third baseline, batting gloves clenched tightly in his left hand, eyes focused squarely on his destination. The Yankees’ designated hitter, who turns 35 in 11 days, helped carry this ballclub to the World Series. Nobody has crushed more homers this October. But while Stanton can still club a baseball harder than practically anybody on planet earth — he laced a 119.5 mph groundout on Monday — his baserunning is hard to believe and even harder to watch.
Built like an Adonis and slower than a statue, Stanton has been besieged by lower-body injuries over the past few years. This season, his sprint speed ranked in the third percentile league-wide.
So as Hernández collected the bounding ball and hucked it home, disaster dawned upon the scene. Ball and giant man arrived simultaneously. Stanton leapt into a half-jump, half-slide more appropriate for an inflatable slip-and-slide at a kid’s birthday party.
Catcher Will Smith didn’t even have to put a tag down; the gargantuan runner slid right into his perfectly placed mitt. Stanton was out — unequivocally and depressingly out. At Yankee Stadium, 49,368 frustrated souls, many of whom dished out thousands of dollars for the privilege to watch this imbroglio, groaned in chorus.
Stanton has been one of the few sources of offensive excellence for the Yankees this month; to see him thrown out in such a crucial moment felt helplessly dispiriting, like a grandparent tumbling down a flight of stairs. It was a crushing moment, with one of the only Yankees bright spots falling victim to his own physical limitations.
From that moment on, the Yankees did not threaten again in their 4-2 loss. They somehow put multiple runners on in the sixth and seventh, yet a breakthrough felt extraordinarily unlikely the entire time. Walker Buehler dog-walked their lineup, punching out five in five scoreless frames. The Dodgers’ bullpen followed by allowing just two hits. Los Angeles’ 4-0 lead felt insurmountable all night, a hill disguised as Everest that the Yankees were trying to climb with a backpack of rocks. A two-run homer from Alex Verdugo with two strikes and two outs in the ninth ruined the shutout but was no more than a footnote.
The struggles of Yankees captain Aaron Judge dominated the headlines ahead of Game 3. He entered the contest 1-for-9 with six strikeouts in this World Series but received a warm, encouraging welcome from the home crowd on Monday. After striking out in his first at-bat on a nasty cutter from Buehler, Judge connected cleanly in his second trip to the plate, lofting a flyball to left.
The crowd, desperate for a reason, rose to its feet. But they saw what they wanted to, yelling with their hearts and not their eyes or their brains. Judge’s knock, hit a measly 87.5 mph, settled feebly in the cozy leather of Hernández. Judge finished the night 0-for-3 with a walk. His at-bats were better, but the results, which are all that matter this time of year, did not come.
So now, the Yankees face an uphill battle and the burden of history. Never has a team recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win a World Series. Famously, only the 2004 Boston Red Sox, against these very Yankees in the ALCS 20 years ago, have ever accomplished that feat in a postseason best-of-seven.
“If you guys have watched our whole season, the ups and downs we had, the good times, bad times, we’ve been in tough situations,” Judge said afterward. “So, well, I gotta keep saying it: We just got to win one game and go from there.”
After two gut-check losses in Los Angeles, the cross-country jaunt presented the Yankees an opportunity to reset. A new venue, some home cooking, chillier weather. But changing the road grays for the iconic home pinstripes did not change the energy.
New York’s starter, Clarke Schmidt, walked the first batter of the game, the somewhat infirm Shohei Ohtani, on just four pitches. The fans in the right-field bleachers performing their traditional roll call hadn’t even serenaded Volpe or third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. by the time Ohtani reached first on his free pass.
Things only got worse from there. Freddie Freeman, the presumptive World Series MVP, drove Ohtani home with a silencing, two-run tank to right field, his third homer in the past three games. Before the Yankees had a chance to hit, they were down. And they would stay down.
This game was riddled with other encapsulations of Yankees misfortune. It began with a lackluster on-field performance by Bronx-raised rapper Fat Joe, who failed to match the magic of Ice Cube’s West Coast set before Game 2. After rolling over meekly to end the third, Juan Soto thumped his helmet into the turf in a rare show of frustration. An inning later, Judge’s flyout fostered false hope. In the sixth, Volpe swung and missed with such force that his bat flew out of his hands and into the Dodgers dugout — but still didn’t connect with anything.
By the ninth inning, the stadium’s lower bowl was half-empty. And when leadoff hitter Gleyber Torres bounced out to end the game, the true faithful remaining in the cheaper seats showered their beloved bombers with a downpour of boos.
It was sad and punchless, a sorry excuse for a Fall Classic performance. Despite a handful of Yankees offering a barrage of irrationally optimistic postgame platitudes, the 2024 Yankees season feels over.
For a World Series that carried so much hype, it’s a shame that only one team bothered to show up.
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