Aaron Boone featured in new 'Game 7' docu-series from Mark Messier and Danny Devito

Aaron Boone is back in the World Series, which cannot help but remind fans of the last time he was there. Mark Messier was one of those fans, then and now.

“Oct. 16,” Messier told Newsday. “We were glued to the TV like everyone else.”

Messier’s Rangers had played the Atlanta Thrashers to a scoreless tie at Madison Square Garden, leaving plenty of time to catch the end of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.

And there it was: Boone hitting an 11th-inning home run against Tim Wakefield to give the Yankees a 6-5 victory over the Red Sox for the American League pennant.

Messier, a Game 7 hero himself by then, grew up and played in Edmonton, but upon moving to New York in 1991, he adopted local teams, especially the Yankees, given what a huge fan of the team his friend and teammate Brian Leetch was.

“We were very close with the Knicks in the mid-'90s, same with the Yankees,” Messier said. “We would see each other out. Derek Jeter was very friendly.

“Having been a guy from Western Canada into an adopted son of New York City, Yankees baseball, it doesn't get any better than that. Then to sit there and to actually see the [Boone] home run, it was stuff that our legends are made of.”

That is part of the point of a new series that Messier co-executive-produced with actor Danny DeVito called “GAME 7” on Prime Video.

The first five episodes all will post on Tuesday, with more planned for the future.

Two of the five premiere episodes are that 2003 game that ended on the home run by the current Yankees manager and Messier's Rangers beating the Canucks in Game 7 of the 1994 Stanley Cup Final.

Was that Yankees game in ’03 chosen over, say, the Red Sox returning the favor in ’04 because the former was a more competitive game? (Boston won, 10-3.)

Not necessarily. Messier said the series has greater ambitions than that.

“There’s two parts,” he said. “One part is that there's a literal sense of the Game 7s, which are amazing stories. And then there's the educational component to it of how are these players able to perform when the stakes are the highest, when the pressure’s the highest?

“What are the skills that they've learned that allow them to slow the moment down, to check their breathing, their critical thinking, to keep in check?”

He added, “We're telling it through the lens of sport, but I think those lessons reach out much further into life in general, and that's why we say everybody in life can have a Game 7 moment.

“Are you prepared for when your Game 7 moment comes around?”

Messier said DeVito told him of his own such moment, when he was a longshot tryout for a new sitcom called “Taxi” in the 1970s. It became his breakout role.

Messier got to know DeVito through Messier’s business partner, Isaac Chera, a friend of DeVito.

“He is a fan of all sports, but he's obviously much more,” Messier said. “He talks about theater, and talks about pressure, and talks about himself going on stage.

“When it gets to Game 7, all that is heightened. For whatever reason, it resonated with him on many different levels. He became an investor and so we were happy to have him on the team.”

DeVito told TV Insider, “I run everything by my kids. My kids lit up when I told them the idea. They all loved it because a Game 7 can take you from zero to 80. You’re on the edge of your seat. If it’s your favorite team, even better.”

Boone is interviewed in the 2003 ALCS episode along with other key figures in that drama. The same is true of the 1994 Cup Final show.

One touching element has Messier and Leetch return to the Garden to relive those moments from 30 years ago, including a visit to the rafters to look at their retired jerseys and wonder what might have been had they lost that Game 7.

Messier said that during a recent anniversary event for the 1994 team, about 15 players watched the “GAME 7” episode in a rented theater in upstate Millerton.

“It was incredible how emotional it was for a lot of the players to sit there and watch and relive something that's been done once in 84 years for that franchise,” Messier said. “It was amazing.”

Another star turn for Messier comes in an episode about Game 7 of the 1987 Cup Final, in which the Oilers beat the Flyers, 3-1. That show is enhanced by footage shot for “The Boys on the Bus,” a documentary about that Oilers era.

“The behind-the-scenes look of what actually was happening during that series was incredible,” Messier said.

These days Messier also is developing a career in broadcasting, both with ESPN and on Prime Video’s new Monday night hockey series that is seen only in Canada.

“The first two years felt like I was on training wheels,” said Messier, who joined ESPN in 2021. “There wasn't a game for two years that I didn't go home and beat myself up for things that I should have said, I could have said, I could have articulated better.

“I was so shocked, because I had done countless interviews. I’d talked about hockey my whole life. But when you get on the set, it's a different skill, and I have so much more respect for the people that do it well and effortlessly.

“I love it. It's been the best decision that I've made in a long time, because it keeps me close to the game. I'm learning something new.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.