At what they hope was rock bottom, the Yankees looked to the top of the order.
In a lineup that includes Juan Soto and Aaron Judge and on an afternoon that Gerrit Cole was on the mound, it was new leadoff hitter Ben Rice who would not let his team lose a fifth straight game.
It was Rice — who debuted just two and a half weeks ago — who opened the scoring with a homer, all but ended the game with another and launched himself into Yankees history with a third.
It was Rice, a 25-year-old who came up through the system without a position, who became the first Yankees rookie ever to blast three home runs in one game.
Proof of his rawness could be found in his circuitous trip through the dugout after his final shot of the afternoon, trying to find the right spot for his first career curtain call as teammates jostled him.
By the time Rice’s work was done, the Yankees had pounded the Red Sox, 14-4, in front of 45,504 sweaty fans in The Bronx on a sweltering Saturday.
Largely because of their fledgling first baseman, the Yankees (55-36) snapped a skid and pulled out just their fifth victory in their past 19 games.
There are concerns up and down the rotation, including with a Cole who flashed dominance but not sharpness.
There are concerns all over the order and notably at third base, where DJ LeMahieu had shown little before adding a pair of RBI singles.
And there have been new concerns over focus and hustle after effort levels were questioned in the previous two losses.
But those concerns at least temporarily disappeared as Rice’s second homer of the day disappeared deep into the right-field seats, extending the lead to six runs and helping a struggling offense reach double-digits in the fifth inning.
The 25-year-old led off the Yankees’ first inning by cranking a 2-2 cutter into the second deck in right for a lead that didn’t not last long.
The Red Sox scored three times in the third inning against Cole, who too often could not locate and allowed three RBI singles in a frame that saw his pitch count begin to rise dramatically.
The Yankees tied it up in the bottom of the third when Alex Verdugo admired his own two-run bomb that broke a personal 17-game homerless skid.
Boston noticed how long Verdugo took rounding the bases, which became clear in the fifth inning.
Cole’s final pitch of the day was a four-seamer that Cole-killer Rafael Devers demolished 441 feet away to put the Red Sox ahead.
Devers watched it go, staying in the batter’s box as he slung his bat to the visiting dugout, and step by step made his way toward first base, with Cole’s eyes on him the entire time.
A back-and-forth game became the Ben Rice Game in the bottom of the fifth.
An RBI double from Anthony Volpe tied it, a well-earned walk from a pinch-hitting Austin Wells put the Yankees ahead and a sacrifice fly from Oswaldo Cabrera plus an RBI single from LeMahieu added insurance.
Rice then turned a three-run game into a six-run game by turning on a Chase Anderson changeup for a three-run shot into the right-field seats.
The game was essentially over, but Rice’s day was not.
He added a two-run shot off Anderson in the seventh to finish off a three-homer, seven-RBI day, becoming the 26th Yankees player to hit at least three dingers in a game.
Rice needed help finding the proper steps for the curtain call. He seems to need less help at the plate.