Entering Tuesday, the previous eight World Series games were won by the team that scored first. So when Freddie Freeman hit a two-run homer to give the relentless Los Angeles Dodgers a first-inning lead in Game 4 of the World Series Tuesday night, the instinct was to wonder if completing a sweep of the New York Yankees would make the Dodgers a modern version of the Big Red Machine.
Then a long-awaited offensive outburst by the Yankees over the next eight innings conjured up the possibility the Dodgers could instead become the 2004 Yankees.
Such is life in October (and maybe November?) for the Dodgers, who are still well-positioned to win their eighth championship even after the Yankees staved off elimination with an 11-4 win.
Freeman’s latest blast — he’s homered in each of his last six World Series games dating back to 2021, a Fall Classic record — was overshadowed by Anthony Volpe’s go-ahead third-inning grand slam and a five-run eighth by the Yankees, who avoided being swept in the World Series for the first time since the Cincinnati Reds did the trick in 1976.
Long- and short-term history suggests the celebration was merely tabled for a night. The Yankees are the first team to force a Game 5 after falling behind three games to none in the World Series since the Reds did so against the Baltimore Orioles in 1970. No team in an 0-3 World Series hole has ever forced a Game 6, never mind actually completed the historic comeback.
“At the end of the day, we’re still in a pretty good spot and we feel good,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Of course, reminders of baseball’s only 0-3 comeback are omnipresent before, during and after every game in this World Series. Ex-Yankees Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez yuk it up on the Fox pre- and postgame show with David Ortiz, who won ALCS MVP honors when the Boston Red Sox made history in 2004. That comeback was sparked by Roberts, who stole second base in the ninth inning of Game 4 before scoring the tying run on Bill Mueller’s single.
But these Dodgers aren’t those Yankees, whose pitching staff was worn out by playing the final four games in four days due to a rainout in between Games 2 and 3. There are no more bullpen days for Los Angeles, which has Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler — who combined to allow one run over 11 1/3 innings in winning Games 2 and 3 — ready to go if Jack Flaherty can’t close it out tonight.
In other words, Kevin Brown is not stomping through that door for the Dodgers, who have lost consecutive games just once this month and haven’t dropped four straight since July. Los Angeles responded to its losses in the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets with an 8-0 win in Game 3 and a pennant-clinching 10-5 victory in Game 6.
Still, the quiet last seven innings for the Dodgers were a reminder of how quickly the Yankees cooled off in 2004, when they scored 32 runs in the first three games and carried a 4-3 lead into the ninth inning of Game 4 before Roberts’ steal led to Mariano Rivera’s fateful blown save. The Yankees scored nine runs in the final three games and trailed wire-to-wire in each of the last two losses.
The Dodgers have also been fairly quiet this Series outside of Freeman, who has more RBIs (10) than the rest of his teammates combined (eight). Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, who precede fellow likely Hall of Famer Freeman in the Dodgers’ lineup, are hitting .200 (6-for-30) with no homers and two RBIs so far. Even Freeman has mostly been all-or-nothing: He has just one hit — his first-inning triple in Game 1—outside of his four homers.
The Game 4 win also further invigorated the Yankees, who have embraced their underdog role. The Yankees as a David trying to fell a Goliath is usually a laughable concept, but it makes them dangerous the rest of the way — especially with the best starting pitcher in the Series, Gerrit Cole, ready to go on normal rest tonight.
“I still think we could shock the world,” infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. said. “I think the one thing about us is we love history and we love to make history. So for us, we’re out here trying to make history right now.”
So are the Dodgers, who are one win away from beginning anew the comparisons to the Big Red Machine, whose ’76 juggernaut lineup featured Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan and Tony Perez plus all-time hit king Pete Rose.
But with one more loss, an entirely different kind of history will begin looming for the Dodgers.
