Rieber: Bloody Sox video ploy strikes out
The Yankees' Josh Donaldson strikes out looking in the eighth inning. He went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts in Game 4 and finished the ALCS 1-for-13 with 10 strikeouts.
Credit: Newsday/J. Conrad Williams Jr.
From the “what in the world were they thinking?” department comes this unfathomable item on the night the Yankees tried and failed to save their season in a 6-5 loss in Game 4 of the ALCS against the Astros in the Bronx:
For motivational purposes, according to manager Aaron Boone, Yankees director of mental conditioning (that’s a real thing) Chad Bohling made a video of highlights of the only team in MLB history to win a seven-game series after being down 3-0.
That video showed highlights of the 2004 Red Sox coming back to shock the world and win the ALCS.
Against the Yankees.
So the Yankees showed their players a compilation of one of the darkest chapters in franchise history as motivation before a win-or-go-home game?
Like everything else the Yankees tried against Houston, it didn’t work, and after a bitter four-game sweep, the 2022 Yankees are going home.
How’s this for bitter? Aaron Judge, after setting the American League single-season record of 62 home runs, with a chance to tie the score with one mighty swing, grounded feebly to the mound for the final out of the season, and possibly of his Yankees career.
That swing capped a postseason in which he went 5-for-36 (.139) with two home runs. Judge heads into free agency now. If he indeed signs elsewhere, he will never have made it to the World Series as a Yankee.
“I’ve got plenty of time” to think about where he’ll play next, Judge said after the loss, and there will be plenty of time to handicap his destination.
Houston was the favorite in this series, with home-field advantage and a rested pitching staff after it took the Yankees five games to oust Cleveland in the ALDS.
Still, to get swept, to get knocked out of the playoffs for the fourth time since 2015 by the same franchise? That’s as embarrassing as the desperate and misguided gambit the Yankees tried in conjuring up their own franchise’s worst postseason loss to Boston in 2004.
“We watched that video today,” Boone said. “We sent it out to all our coaches and are getting it out to all of our players.”
Why did the Yankees stop there? Did Boone pass around a photo of Curt Schilling’s bloody sock?
Why not show a grainy clip of Yankees slugger Babe Ruth getting thrown out trying to steal second for the final out of the 1926 World Series? How about Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off homer in Pittsburgh to beat the Yankees in Game 7 of the 1960 World Series?
Seattle’s Edgar Martinez should be in there for his series-ending hit in Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS. Or Cleveland’s Sandy Alomar Jr. tying the score with a home run off Mariano Rivera a night before an eventual series-ending defeat in the 1997 ALDS. And don’t forget Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez hitting a bloop single to beat Rivera in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.
Was footage of the Hindenburg disaster available?
To make matters worse — and this one isn’t the Yankees’ doing — Boone revealed that he got a personal pregame pep talk on Sunday from Hall of Famer David Ortiz, one of the Red Sox heroes of 2004.
Big Papi. Urging on the manager of the Yankees.
That one happened when ESPN broadcaster Eduardo Perez was in Boone’s office on Sunday and FaceTimed Ortiz.
“He answered and I was like, ‘Hey,’ ” Perez said later. “And he’s like, ‘Dude!’
Perez said: “He’s like, ‘Man, you guys got to do what we did back then!’ And that’s how it was. I didn’t tell Boonie I was calling him.”
Perez, a former major-leaguer and son of Hall of Famer Tony Perez, said the call with Ortiz lasted less than a minute.
Boone said the motivational video the team shared with the players was three to four minutes. Ask any Yankees fan if they’d like to watch three to four minutes of highlights of the Yankees blowing the 2004 ALCS to the Red Sox. Of Ortiz’s walk-off heroics and Dave Roberts’ historic steal and, finally, Johnny Damon’s grand slam off Javier Vazquez in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium.
ESPN did a whole “30 for 30” on the 2004 ALCS called “Four Days in October.”
Know any Yankees fans who watched it? Was that before or after they poked themselves in the eye with a sharp stick?
Look, lineup changes and motivational videos and Knute Rockne speeches and anything else the Yankees could think of to overcome the Astros didn’t make a bit of difference. Houston is 7-0 in this postseason and will face the underdog Phillies in the World Series.
On Sunday, it looked as if the baseball gods wanted a Game 5 when the Yankees — even after Nestor Cortes exited in the third inning with a groin injury after giving up a tying three-run home run by ALCS MVP Jeremy Pena — took a 5-4 lead in the sixth on Harrison Bader’s solo home run.
It was “Bade Ruth’s” fifth home run of the postseason. There was hope in the Bronx in a game that started about 90 minutes late because of the threat of rain.
But a defensive mistake by Gleyber Torres and Isiah Kiner-Falefa on a potential double-play ball in the seventh led to the tying and eventual winning runs. Torres was charged with the error for what appeared to be an errant flip, but it’s equally possible that Kiner-Falefa was at fault for coming across the bag awkwardly. Either way, the go-ahead run that scored on Alex Bregman’s RBI single off Clay Holmes was unearned.
After Bader’s home run, the final 10 Yankees were retired by Houston relievers. The Yankees had one hit in their final 17 at-bats.
It’s the same old story for the Yankees, who haven’t been to the World Series since winning it in 2009.
Maybe that team’s stars — Rivera and Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte and Co. — should have been the ones the Yankees tapped for inspiration before Game 4. At least that would have made more sense.
Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.
