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Star these last two games. Circle them. These are the kinds of circumstances you find yourself in when the calendar flips to October. Late innings. Extra innings. Make a pitch. Make a play. Win a game. Electrify a crowd.
This is how it happens in October. This is how it goes. Teams die hard. The Royals on Wednesday and the Red Sox on Thursday, they needed these games like oxygen. The Royals are trying to go from 106 losses to the playoffs. The Red Sox are trying to get hot at the right time, collect wins, tip-toe into the postseason.
These aren’t spoilers, saving their best solely to do mean things to the Yankees without any skin in the games themselves. The Yankees? Sure, they needed these games, too. They want to beat out the Orioles, avoid the play-in, get ready for a best-of-five without bothering with a best-of-three. They have a cushion. They can’t afford to play that way.
These last two nights, they didn’t. Wednesday, they tied the Royals in the bottom of the 10th, held them in the top of the 11th, then sent 2-3-4 up in the bottom. That’s a tall task for anyone. Juan Soto moved the ghost runner to third. The Royals passed Aaron Judge. And Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit one that Bobby Witt Jr. could only stop. Yankees win, 4-3.
Thursday, they held the Sox in the 10th, set up 2-3-4 in the bottom. Still a tall task for anyone, always a tall task. This time Soto took care of it himself, a line drive just under Trevor Story’s glove. Aaron Boone had smartly used Jon Berti as the ghost runner. He scampered home. Yankees win, 2-1.
“Another great ending,” Boone said. “It’s that time of year.”
It’s that time, all right. The games are going to look like this up and down October. They are going to be tied in the seventh, tied in the eighth, tied in the ninth. There’ll be extra innings. Make a pitch. Make a play. Win a game.
It’s good to develop this kind of muscle memory. It’s good to figure out a way. Not everyone is the ’27 Yankees, or the ’61 Yankees, bashing even the best teams into submission. Not everyone is the ’98 Yankees, although as dominant as those Yankees were, they sure knew how to win games just like this, maybe as well as any team ever has.
“Every day seems more and more important,” Boone had said before the game. “What I know is this: We have as good a chance as anyone to win this thing.”
He has been mocked for these starry-eyed declarations all year, lampooned for all the nights it seemed like he was going to break into song, Monty Python style: “Always look on the bright side of life …”
Replete with whistling.
But you know something? He was right then. And he’s especially right now. Feel free to list the names of the teams in the American League that frighten you right now. Feel free to list the names of the teams the Yankees would surely want to avoid in the playoffs. Maybe they don’t exactly terrify anyone else, either, but that’s the point.
They have as good a chance as anyone. They are getting used to winning the games they will need to win. The old reliables came through in extras on consecutive nights. Want more? Even two of the usual suspects, who looked like they might get voted off October Island, were terrific Thursday: five strong from Nestor Cortes, then two close-out outs from Clay Holmes in the 10th.
Are the Red Sox the Red Sox we remember? They aren’t. But neither are the Yankees. Those battles of 2003 and 2004 might as well have taken place in 1903 and 1904, as relevant as they are to today. It’s good to remember them fondly. Boone certainly does.
“I’m a sports fan,” he said earlier Thursday. “I have these moments in sports that you know where you were and you remember and you have a story around it. Hearing the stories over the years of people, whatever side of the ledger they were on, that have an intimate, memorable story around it, that’s been neat.”
Know what’s neater? Winning games like the one Boone won with that forever home run off the late Tim Wakefield’s knuckler back on Oct. 16, 2003, Yankees 6, Red Sox 5, Game 7. Games like Wednesday and Thursday, splendid dress rehearsals for the task to come in a few weeks. Make a pitch. Make a play.
Win a game.
