Who’s going to play the part of Kevin Millar on Tuesday afternoon? Jazz Chisholm Jr.? Chisholm has Millar’s chattiness. Maybe it’ll be Gerrit Cole. Cole is a loud and ardent leader. He’s been known to take a bullet or two for a teammate or a manager.
Can the Yankees activate Nick Swisher?
Swisher would definitely do it.
“Don’t let us win tonight. This is a big game. They’ve got to win because if we win, we’ve got Cole coming back in Game 5 and then Rodon will pitch Game 6 and then you can take that fraud stuff and put it to bed. Don’t let the Yanks … Win. This. Game.”
Pounding the glove for emphasis.
Twenty years later, it’ll take two things for the Yankees to be able to balance the scales of baseball justice. Twenty years after becoming the first — and still only — baseball team to have a 3-0 lead in a best-of-seven reversed on them, this would be a good time to channel those detested Red Sox, find something inside themselves Tuesday night.
That’s when they will report to work down 3-0 in this, the 120th World Series. Their other ancient rivals, the Dodgers, merrily put them in that hole Monday by pouncing early thanks to Freddie Freeman and closing late thanks to a stout pitching performance from Walker Buhler and an ensemble cast of relievers backing him up on the way to a 4-2 whitewash.
Now, they need to do the worst thing imaginable, close their eyes, bite down hard, swallow harder, and … emulate the Red Sox.
And the fact is, it doesn’t have to be as painful, or as profoundly distasteful, as saying what Millar said. More important, they have to act as the Red Sox acted, which is two-fold. First, honor the pledge of every manager who ever saw a team fall into an 0-3 hole and try to have four one-game winning streaks and not one four-game winning streak.
The other is more obvious.
Through three games of the 2004 ALCS, David Ortiz had made a pest of himself, getting six hits, but five of them were singles and none of them left the yard. Half of them came in Game 3, a 19-8 massacre that was garbage time almost from the start. But in Games 4 through 7, this was Ortiz: .316/.409/.790. That’s a 1.199 OPS. That included home runs in Games 4, 5 and 7, and nine of the most essential RBIs ever collected.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Heyman: Yankees crumbling in World Series raises uncomfortable questions
- Yankees decide on Game 4 starter after Gerrit Cole hesitance
- Sherman: Dodgers exposing the Yankees in every way
- Vaccaro: Yankees only have one hope to pull off Red Sox-like miracle
Those are the kind of four-game numbers Aaron Judge specializes in. He’s gotten on those kinds of rolls dozens of times, rolls that defy explanation and take breath away. Some of those times, he comes straight out of a batting slump to do it, too.
The Yankees need that.
It’s no longer enough to say the Yankees could use that. It’s no longer feasible to build an argument that the Yankees can somehow survive in this Series by carrying Judge instead of the other way around. It’s no longer enough to laud Judge for taking “good at-bats,” like the one he took in the eighth inning, when he drew a six-pitch walk off LA righty Ryan Brasier, battling back from a 1-and-2 count.
No. Not good enough.
The Yankees need more. They need Judge to get hot — and red-hot, if possible. Maybe it’s just a sign that the Yankees are indeed a flawed roster that they’re so dependent on one player, even as their other superstar, Juan Soto, has done just fine.
You know what?
You can have that conversation when the season’s over. You can wring your hands about it in a week — or a few days, if things don’t turn around quickly. Aaron Boone pondered a few massages to his lineup during the course of a 5 ½-hour flight home, from takeoff right in through having to fasten his seat belt, make sure he raised his tray table and ensure his seat back was in the upright and locked position.
He did one of those: subbing Jose Trevino in for struggling rookie catcher Austin Wells, 4-for-41 with 18 strikeouts in the postseason. He thought of doing a few others, though he was reluctant to share them. One that would’ve been entirely defensible: swapping Judge and Soto in the order. If nothing else, just to get a new look.
“It’s the World Series, no,” he finally decided. “That’s our guy [Judge], and there’s pressure in the Series, whatever spot you’re hitting. He’s our guy and confident he’ll get it going.”
Yankees fans treated him warmly, as expected, and will do so Tuesday night, for sure, even if his 0-for-3 lowered his World Series average to .083 (with no homers) and his postseason average to .140. He’s running out of season now, and the Yankees are running out of time. Twenty years ago, in a similar predicament, David Ortiz backed up Kevin Millar’s vow with his bat.
The Yankees don’t need the vow. Just Judge’s bat. STAT, as they used to say on “ER.”