The toe tag was being prepared early in the night, but the Yankees are not dead yet.
With his hometown team facing a 3-0 deficit in the World Series and trailing by a run in the third inning of Game 4, Anthony Volpe played the role of human defibrillator, crushing a grand slam that put the Yankees ahead in the third inning.
The bullpen then held on for dear life before the Yankees finally broke the game open late to pull out an 11-4 win over the Dodgers on Tuesday night in The Bronx.
No team has ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in the World Series, and the Yankees still have an uphill climb to become the first.
But they took the first step on Tuesday, at the very least saving themselves the embarrassment of getting swept, and set up Game 5 on Wednesday back at Yankee Stadium with their ace on the mound.
“Just winning one sets it up,” Anthony Rizzo said before the game. “We’ve got Gerrit Cole lurking [Wednesday] if we can get there. We’ve got a pissed off [Carlos] Rodón for Game 6 if we can get out there [to Los Angeles]. And Game 7 is always a crap shoot.”
Volpe’s grand slam, which sent a nervous sellout crowd of 49,354 into a frenzy, gave the Yankees a 5-2 lead – their first since the 10th inning of Game 1.
The Dodgers pulled within 5-4 with two runs off Luis Gil in the fifth inning, but that was as close as they would get.
Tim Hill, Clay Holmes, Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Tim Mayza combined for five scoreless innings while Austin Wells crushed a solo homer in the sixth and Gleyber Torres ripped a three-run shot in a five-run eighth inning that turned a nail-biter into a laugher.
The Yankees’ big inning that they had been waiting for all postseason included a terrific 10-pitch at-bat by Alex Verdugo, which resulted in a ground ball that scored Volpe from third, and was capped off by a scuffling Aaron Judge getting in on the fun with an RBI single.
Volpe, who went 2-for-3 with a double, walk, two steals, three runs scored and a few strong defensive plays – all of which earned him various “Volpe” chants throughout the night – drilled the grand slam off erratic reliever Daniel Hudson, the second pitcher in the Dodgers’ bullpen game.
It was set up when Hudson hit Judge on the right hand with a fastball, allowed a long single to Jazz Chisholm Jr. and then walked Giancarlo Stanton.
Then with two outs, Hudson threw a slider near the bottom of the zone and Volpe pounced on it, sneaking it just over the fence in left field.
The Dodgers made it a 5-4 game in the fifth inning while knocking Gil out of the game. Will Smith led off the frame by poking an 0-2 fastball into the short porch to make it 5-3 before Gil walked No. 9 hitter Tommy Edman.
After giving up a single to Shohei Ohtani, Hill nearly got a double play ball to escape the jam, but Freddie Freeman busted it down the line to break it up and score Edman from third.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Yankees keep season alive as offense finally breaks out in big way
- Rookie’s first World Series outing was just enough for the Yankees
- Heyman: Yankees finally showed some signs to believe in as Bombers keep title hopes alive
- Vaccaro: The Yankees were at rock bottom before Anthony Volpe’s heroics
Wells, who was out of the lineup in Monday’s Game 3 and entered Tuesday batting just .093 (4-for-43) in his first postseason, provided a big insurance run in the bottom of the sixth when he crushed a solo homer to the second deck off Landon Knack to make it 6-4.
The rookie catcher finished the night 2-for-3, adding a double and a walk.
The night began in familiar fashion as Freeman clubbed a two-run homer off Gil in the top of the first inning to take some air out of the building.
It marked the second straight game Freeman homered in the first inning, the fourth straight game he has homered in this World Series and the sixth straight World Series game in which he has homered – a new MLB record.