If Yankees want to rally at home, it starts with Judge, Boone
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The Yankees need to change the narrative of this World Series and change it real fast, do that at Yankee Stadium, which has waited 15 years for the Series game it will get on Monday night when the whole thing comes back to New York. They really come back home hoping to give the Stadium the kind of week it had once back in 2001, when another Yankee team came back down 0-2 and lifted the city at that terrible time and gave it three wins and three nights that will never be forgotten, even if the D-backs ended up winning that World Series in the end.
All of the Yankees need to start all that by winning Game 3, and getting back up the way they have plenty of other times this season, if not with their season on the line. After all the games they¡¯ve won to get here, they need to win just one.
And the two Aarons -- Judge and Boone -- need it most.
Judge has to be the one hitting the home runs that Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hern¨¢ndez and Tommy Edman hit this weekend at Dodger Stadium as the Dodgers jumped the Yankees. He needs to hit the home runs that the other two members of the Yankees¡¯ Big 3, Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton, hit in Games 1 and 2. And the manager? He comes home hoping his bullpen moves -- on which the World Series can always turn -- can make him look as good as Dave Roberts has looked so far.
The Dodgers didn¡¯t win the World Series this past weekend, just those first two games, one of them as dramatic a win as the Series has ever seen. But there is still time for the Yankees, of course, the way there was when they were 0-2 down in 1996 and came all the way back; the way they did in 2001, when Scott Brosius hit a famous home run and Tino Martinez hit another one and Derek Jeter finally became Mr. November.
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They all need to start turning this Series back around in their direction. Again: That means the manager who has won a ton of regular-season games for the Yankees and No. 99, who has hit all those home runs, have more on the line than any of them right now.
Boone is the one who threw Nestor Cortes at Freeman in the bottom of the 10th on Friday night, a bottom of the 10th that goes into Series history now with the one the Mets played against the Red Sox in Game 6 in ¡¯86, when they came from behind and saved that Series and saved their season. Judge is the one who hit 58 homers in the regular season and has hit just two so far in the postseason, who's struck out six times already in this Series while going 1-for-9 at the plate, giving him 19 strikeouts in 50 plate appearances overall this October.
¡°Plain and simple, I gotta start swinging at strikes,¡± Judge said after Game 2.
And then hitting them out of sight. And soon.
It takes just one swing to change everything, the way it did Friday night for Freeman with the bases loaded and the Dodgers still down a run and staring a Game 1 loss in the face. It takes one out from a relief pitcher in a big moment. Roberts got it on Saturday night in the brightest lights, bases loaded for the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth. Roberts called on Alex Vesia to pitch to Jose Trevino. Trevino isn¡¯t Freddie Freeman. But still. World Series game on the line. Bases loaded.
Cortes threw one pitch to Freeman Friday night and Freeman hit it to Kirk Gibson County. Vesia threw one pitch to Trevino and he hit it to Edman in center field and the game was over and the Dodgers had won 4-2 and were 2-0 up on the Yankees. A few minutes before, Judge had been at the plate with Soto on second and nobody out and struck out again.
¡°No one said it was going to be easy,¡± Boone said at Dodger Stadium after Game 2 was over.
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The Yankees aren¡¯t playing the AL Central any longer. They are playing the Dodgers, who once again had the best record in baseball in the regular season. You bet no one thought it would be easy. But it can all change, with a swing or a pitch. All that has happened is that the Dodgers held serve at home. Now the Yankees come home.
Boone and Judge have been together now for six Octobers since Boone replaced Joe Girardi as manager. They have been as far as the American League Championship Series twice, lost to the Astros both times, got swept in one of them. Now they have made it as far as the World Series. Boone swung and missed on Friday night with Cortes. Judge keeps swinging and missing.
Once, though, and famously back in ¡®01, the Yankees won three in a row at the old Stadium. Rocked the place and got right back up. The two Aarons have that kind of chance now. They know what the L.A. story was for them. Maybe the Bronx tale that starts Monday night can be different, the way there is still time to make this October different from all the others, for both of them.