BRONX, NY — All that talk about how the New York Yankees needed just one swing to turn things around might not be so far-fetched after all — and Anthony Volpe can be thanked for that.
The young Yankees shortstop had his first big Yankees moment, the kind of moment that almost seemed commonplace for his favorite player on his favorite team, Derek Jeter.
Staring elimination in the face within a 3-0 World Series deficit in Game 4 on Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, Volpe finally resuscitated the team that had become dormant against the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Trailing 2-1 in the third inning with the bases loaded, the 23-year-old lined a first-pitch slider from reliever Daniel Hudson over the left-field fence to give the Yankees their first lead since Game 1 and open the floodgates for a misfiring offense that had scored seven runs in its first three games.
“I pretty much blacked out as soon as I saw it go over the fence,” Volpe said.
Behind that grand slam, the Yankees scored 11 in Game 4 to keep the lights on in the Bronx for one more day — and with it, provide that collective sigh of relief from both inside the clubhouse and out.
“I feel like it really just takes one big swing, and I feel like that was Volpe’s big swing there,” catcher Austin Wells, who hit a solo home run in the sixth inning of the 11-4 Yankees win, said. “It allowed everyone to just take a deep breath and have fun. I think also the situation we were in, I think that we just kind of needed to say screw it and go after it and have fun because some guys may never come back to the World Series again. We were enjoying the game, and I think that allowed us to play a lot looser.”
The Yankee Stadium crowd, which had been muzzled for the majority of the previous 24 hours after a 4-2 loss in Game 3 on Monday, was finally able to let loose.
“When Anthony hits that ball, it was fun to see Yankee Stadium erupt,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “It’s like they’ve been waiting for 48 hours to do that. Then just the way the game went on and on, it was just the energy, the noise, the excitement. It was a Yankee Stadium World Series game.”
Volpe went 2-for-3 in Game 4, adding a double to his grand slam to help extend the season of his boyhood team. Now a well-documented factoid, he was at Yankees’ championship parade 15 years ago.
A miracle will be needed to end that drought — no team has come back from a 3-0 deficit at the World Series — but a lifelong fan from New Jersey getting to hit a grand slam at the Fall Classic will be near the top of his career accomplishments when everything is said and done.
For now, though, he and the Yankees are just trying to chip away.
“Hopefully, when we win the World Series and I’m with family, we can all reflect on everything,” Volpe said.
For now, he will have to settle on reflecting on big nights with the team he has loved since childhood and with Jeter, who is working the Series as an analyst and spoke to him after Game 4.
“It was my dream, but it was all my friends’ dreams, all my cousins’ dreams, probably my sister’s dream, too,” Volpe said “But winning the World Series was first and foremost by far. Nothing else compares. So still got a lot of work to do.”
