NEW YORK – An entire stadium held its breath, fearing the worst, as the most powerful man in the MLB playoffs made 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 that he wouldn’t reach him.
With his Yankees down three runs in the fourth inning of Game 3 of the World Series, Stanton, moments before this dismal run, had ripped a double to left for the Yankees’ first hit of the game. Two batters later, with two outs on the board, shortstop Anthony Volpe launched his own hit, a soft line drive over the shortstop’s head. The ball in contact with the grass presented the desperate home fans with a ray of hope, a reason to cheer, a little optimism.
Just 4.5 seconds later, that light went out…probably forever.
Stanton clattered down the third base line, batting gloves clutched tightly on his left hand and eyes focused squarely on his destination. The Yankees designated hitter, who will turn 35 in 11 days, helped lead this club to the World Series. No one has hit more home runs this October. But while Stanton can still hit a baseball harder than virtually anyone on planet Earth (he hit a 119.5 mph grounder on Monday), his baserunning is hard to believe and even harder to watch.
Stanton, built like an Adonis and slower than a statue, has been plagued by lower-body injuries in recent years. This season, his sprint speed ranked in the third percentile league-wide.
Then, when Hernandez picked up the bouncing ball and threw it home, disaster struck the scene. The ball and the giant arrived simultaneously. Stanton jumped into a half-jump, half-slide, more appropriate for an inflatable slide at a children’s birthday party.
Catcher Will Smith didn’t even have to put a tag on the ground; the gigantic runner slid right into his perfectly placed glove. Stanton was out, unequivocally and depressingly out. At Yankee Stadium, 49,368 frustrated souls, many of whom handed out thousands of dollars for the privilege of witnessing this mess, groaned in chorus.
Stanton has been one of the Yankees’ few sources of offensive excellence this month; Seeing him sent off at such a crucial moment was disheartening, like a grandfather falling down a flight of stairs. It was a devastating moment, in which one of the Yankees’ only bright spots fell victim to his own physical limitations.
From that point on, the Yankees did not threaten again in their 4-2 loss. Somehow they put several runners into the sixth and seventh, but a breakthrough seemed extraordinarily unlikely all along. Walker Buehler paced his lineup, hitting five in five scoreless frames. The Dodgers bullpen continued to allow 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 by Alex Verdugo with two strikes and two outs in the ninth inning ruined the shutout but was nothing more than a footnote.
Yankees captain Aaron Judge’s struggles dominated the headlines heading into Game 3. He entered the contest 1 for 9 with six strikeouts in this World Series, but received a warm and encouraging welcome from the home crowd on Monday. After striking out in his first at-bat on a nasty cutter from Buehler, Judge hit cleanly on his second trip to the plate, launching a fly ball to left field.
The crowd, desperate for a reason, rose to its feet. But they saw what they wanted, shouting with their hearts and not with their eyes or their brains. Judge’s hit, which reached a measly 87.5 mph, sat weakly on Hernandez’s comfortable leather. Judge finished the night 0 for 3 with a walk. His at-bats were better, but the results, which are the only thing that matters this time of year, didn’t come.
So now the Yankees face an uphill battle and the weight of history. Never has a team come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a World Series. Famously, only the 2004 Boston Red Sox, against these same Yankees in the American League Championship Series 20 years ago, have accomplished that feat in a best-of-seven postseason.
“If you’ve seen our entire season, the ups and downs we’ve had, the good times and the bad times, we’ve been in tough situations,” Judge said afterward. “So, well, I have to keep saying it: We just have to win one game and go from there.”
After two losses in Los Angeles, the cross-country jaunt presented the Yankees with an opportunity to reset. A new place, some homemade food and cooler weather. But swapping the grays of the road for the iconic pinstripes of the home didn’t change the energy.
New York starter Clarke Schmidt walked the game’s first batter, the somewhat ill Shohei Ohtani, on just four pitches. The fans in the right field stands doing their traditional roll call hadn’t even serenaded Volpe or third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. when Ohtani reached first with his free pass.
Things only got worse from there. Freddie Freeman, the presumptive World Series MVP, brought Ohtani home with a silencing two-run tanker to right field, his third home run in the last three games. Before the Yankees had a chance to bat, they were already down. And they would stay down.
This game was littered with other summaries of the Yankees’ misfortune. It all started with a lackluster on-field performance by Bronx-bred rapper Fat Joe, who failed to match the magic of Ice Cube’s West Coast set before Game 2. After rolling tamely to finish the third, Juan Soto He hit his helmet on the grass. in a rare display of frustration. An inning later, Judge’s fly ball raised false hopes. In the sixth, Volpe swung and missed so hard that his bat slipped out of his hands and into the Dodgers dugout, but it still didn’t connect with anything.
In the ninth inning, the lower bowl of the stadium was half empty. And when leadoff hitter Gleyber Torres came out to end the game, the true faithful who remained in the cheaper seats showered their beloved bombers with a hail of boos.
It was sad and lame, a sorry excuse for a Fall Classic performance. Despite a handful of Yankees offering a barrage of irrationally optimistic platitudes after the game, the 2024 Yankees season appears to be over.
For a World Series that generated so much hype, it’s a shame that only one team bothered to show up.