Gerrit Cole did not do the historic ace thing at this time of year and insist on taking the ball with his team facing elimination in Game 4.
Fine.
The Yankees nevertheless won with him as a cheerleader.
So now he must do the modern ace thing. He needs to take the ball on regular rest Wednesday night and get the Yankees on another business trip. He needs to be the reason the Yankees make a little bit of history as they try to make a really big piece of history.
The smaller-scale history is that none of the 24 previous teams who have gone down three-games-to-none in a World Series have even forced a Game 6. The Yankees became just the fifth of now 25 to even avoid a sweep.
This now falls on Cole more than anyone else. He signed what was the largest pitching contract in history with the expectation of winning just the type of game he will be handed in Game 5. Of helping the Yankees to a championship.
They are still far from that. But he can get the Yankees back to Los Angeles for the weekend and force the Dodgers to begin to more seriously contemplate the historic implications of blowing a three-games-to-none lead.
In losing Monday and winning Tuesday, the Yankees needed their bullpen to cover 11 ¹/₃ of 18 innings, including five in what ballooned to an 11-4 season-extending triumph in Game 4. So the Yankees need Cole to pitch well and stick around for a while. They need a star and to thank all the costars who enabled the Yankees to avoid the ignominy of being swept en route to winning their first World Series game since sealing a championship on Nov. 4, 2009.
The bottom third of the Yankees lineup came in hitting 4-for-34 (.118) with 12 strikeouts in this best-of-seven. But they drove in the Yankees’ first seven runs of Game 4 when this was much more of a nail-biter. The biggest blow was a third-inning grand slam by Anthony Volpe, who as an 8-year-old Yankee fan attended the Canyon of Heroes parade in 2009. Austin Wells, re-inserted into the lineup with an .093 postseason average, doubled off the right field wall in the second inning to position Volpe to score on ninth-place hitter Alex Verdugo’s groundout and launched a long homer leading off the sixth inning.
Volpe, who grew up idolizing Derek Jeter, accentuated a game befitting the Hall of Famer. In the eighth inning, Volpe hustled a double with one out, Wells walked, that duo pulled a double steal and then Verdugo waged an 11-pitch at-bat in which he fouled off six two-strike pitches before a slow grounder that scored Volpe with a head-first slide despite the infield being in.
It was 7-4 and until that point, Gleyber Torres, Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton were hitless in 11 at-bats. But Torres smashed a three-run homer, Soto doubled and Judge drove him in with a lined single.
That starry group will be needed to join Cole if the Yankees are going to guarantee one last road trip this season. They have to counteract Freddie Freeman, whose two-run first-inning homer put the Dodgers instantly up, dulled the Yankee Stadium crowd of 49,354 and made history as he has homered in all four games of this Fall Classic and in his last six World Series games dating to the 2021 Braves championship.
That homer and another sketchy defensive play by Torres, giving a bad feed to Volpe on what should have been an inning-ending double play in the fifth helped the Dodgers tack on a run and keep a game close that they were not pursuing with all-out fervor. Los Angeles only has three starters and was using a bullpen game and by hanging tough, the Dodgers forced the Yankees to use many of their key bullpen pieces before blowing the game open in the eighth inning.
The Dodgers only used three relievers after opener Ben Casparius, but none of their four main pieces — lefties Anthony Banda and Alex Vesia and righties Michael Kopech and Blake Treinen. So they will be fresh behind Jack Flaherty, who pitched well in the Series opener. So did Cole. But he was done after 88 pitches and six innings allowing one run.
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
It feels as if Cole must give the Yankees at least that — if not more. He will have full rest to do it. Cole said there were no conversations to bring him back short. Boone explained that in a year when Cole missed the first two-plus months with an elbow injury, it would not be wise to push him on short rest.
Fine. It worked perfectly for the Yankees. Against the underbelly of the Dodger pitching staff, the Yankees eventually opened up a big lead to re-engage the crowd and perhaps bring something even feistier on Wednesday night.
The crowd knows what is at stake. The 2004 Yankees in the ALCS are the only one of 40 teams to have a three-game-to-none playoff lead in MLB history and blow it, beginning with a Game 4 in which Dave Roberts had a key stolen base. Now these Dodgers, managed by Roberts, are the 41st with a three-none edge — now down to three-one.
The first goal is to make the smaller history by becoming the first team in World Series history to get to a Game 6 in such a situation. To get on the plane for one last 2024 business trip.
The ball and history is in Gerrit Cole’s right hand.