Inappropriate or not, the Red Sox’s decision to honor Mariano Rivera while celebrating themselves Sunday night should provide the 2013 Yankees inspiration.
No, this is not about waking sleeping giants. We already went through that nonsense with Ryan Dempster hitting Alex Rodriguez. That inspiration was fleeting. The only AL East giants are the Red Sox, who accentuated that over the weekend with domination and humiliation of the Yankees.
What this is about is the message the Red Sox offered, certainly by accident, during a tribute to Rivera. That is, if the Yankees can see it, encode it, refuel their tired, achy bodies with it.
The pre-game program was built around one of Rivera’s greatest failures, a pitch-by-pitch accounting of the Red Sox rallying in Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS. The moral of the story, at least the way Boston officials wanted to present it, was to show the grace of the retiring closer. Rivera was cheered the following Opening Day at Fenway by Boston fans, and rather than react with snarling animus – and I was reminded watching it again Sunday that he was standing next to Randy Johnson, who would have done just that – Rivera instead smiled, tipped his cap and embraced the absurdity and the backhanded compliment of the moment.
For these 2013 Yankees, though, what they needed to see was not Rivera’s dignity, but rather the subtle context of possibility.
Understand those 2004 Red Sox were as close to a baseball grave as a team could be. It is one thing to be down 3-0 in a best-of-seven, a deficit from which – at that point – no club ever had rebounded. It is another to be coming off a 19-8 humiliation in Game 3. Still another for this to be happening in the year – don’t laugh, because this seemed huge then – they had lost out on A-Rod (the next Babe Ruth) to the Yankees, of all teams. Still another to be three outs from continuing the greatest self-fulfilling prophecy in sports – the doom and gloom that came with The Curse.
And there on the mound to get those three outs was Rivera. The greatest closer ever. Greater in the playoffs.
Boston’s probability of winning that game, much less that series, much less eight straight games to take both the ALCS and their first World Series in 86 years, was microscopic, tinier than tiny, certainly smaller than 6.5 percent, which is how Coolstandings.com projected the Yanks’ chances of making the playoffs on Monday morning following the lost weekend at Fenway.
There is an opportunity for the Yankees here. But is their self-belief intact? Because it starts there. These Yankees have an awful lot of work to do over the final 12 games simply to reach a one-game wild-card play-in, loser go home and winner almost certainly face the Red Sox – which for the Yankees feels like go home soon after.
After the latest humbling Sunday night, Alex Rodriguez mentioned how well the team has played recently, except against Boston. Which is like saying the 1930s were wonderful, except for the Great Depression.
Always terse after loses, Joe Girardi was distinguishably more so following a 9-2 finale in which the Yankees seemed more outclassed than ever by the Red Sox. He told his team he did not like its effort and then informed the media, “We stunk here. We didn’t play well here. We’ve got options. We can continue to stink or play better. If we play better, we have a shot.”
Since Girardi had been the main, unwavering advocate of his club’s fortitude, you sense he finally saw surrender. That all the uphill charges against injuries at last had robbed the Yankees’ fight. That a new swath of injuries – Brett Gardner, Alex Rodriguez, Boone Logan, Austin Romine – and the continuing deterioration of the pitching (namely CC Sabathia) and the realization they just are not in Boston’s weight class finally made them pull the plug.
Hopelessness set in. Because the battle has been so long and painful. But also because – in the backs of minds – Yankees players have to wonder whether it is worth two more weeks of pushing those weary bodies simply to get to that one game and, in the best scenario, have to deal with the Red Sox again.
Girardi was trying anger, a last tool at his disposal, to begin to see whether he can defibrillate this squad one more time, jolt it to life for a final regular-season push. He is a veteran of the 1996 Yankees, who believed when they were down 2-0 to the seemingly unstoppable Braves in the 1996 World Series. That group turned it around, snatched dynasty from the Braves and built one themselves.
And on Sunday night, before this Yankees team got trounced again at Fenway, it saw how grass could grow from the weeds. In an attempt to honor Rivera or themselves, the Red Sox showed the Yankees a film that should be a reminder to keep hope alive.
But it will be tough to push those wounded bodies if the mind does not think it is possible. They are going to have to hit better and field better and, especially, pitch better than they did at Fenway. But what they are going to have to do better first to make any of it possible is this: Believe.