CLEVELAND – The baseball gods work in the shadows, scripting moments, matchups and sequences we couldn’t fathom.

Take, for example, the night of June 26, when Matthew Boyd happened to turn on a Cleveland Guardians game to gauge the pulse of the team desperate for his services.

That night, a rookie with the shape of struggling past offensive tackles hit a home run to center field at Camden Yards in his first career at-bat.

Fast forward four months. Boyd, sporting a rejuvenated left elbow, has become Cleveland’s most consistent postseason starter, and he had another standout performance in Game 3 of the ALCS. And that hulking rookie who has followed Boyd from the start, Jhonkensy Noel, saved their season with an earthquake halfway up the left field stands.

Take, for example, the vantage point of Noel’s father, Rafael. He had never been to the US until October, but he is along for the Guardians’ ride through October.

Noel and his father like to talk about hitting, but the conversation often stalls when Rafael asks why he did or didn’t bid on a particular pitch. Noel responds by suggesting his father step in and try to swat a 90-mph slider that’s spinning toward his cleats.

Rafael won’t have any constructive criticism for Noel’s moonshot that, with two outs in the ninth, saved Cleveland from an insurmountable series deficit. Noel said he looked for every pitch on the inner part of the slab; a change of 130 km/h over the center was sufficient.

Rafael witnessed a moment Clevelanders won’t forget, as fans chanted the nickname “Big Christmas” that manager Stephen Vogt gave to his son. (Noel said he likes the name.) After all, this is a city where Ryan Merritt will play host to a ceremonial first pitch before Game 5 on Saturday night. Merritt totaled 31 2/3 innings as a major leaguer, but he shut out the Blue Jays four frames into this round in 2016, giving Cleveland an American League pennant. Sometimes there’s no better vacation spot than Cleveland in October.

Take, for example, the showdown between a soon-to-be two-time MVP winner and the closer who posted one of the best relief seasons in the history of the sport. Emmanuel Clase has been eager for the matchup since he was forced to intentionally walk Aaron Judge at Yankee Stadium in late August. Judge sent a 99 mph cutter to right field for a game-tying, crowd-silent home run. The Guardians’ blueprint — Boyd for five innings, an early lead, Cade Smith, Tim Herrin and Hunter Gaddis pushing their way in front of a well-rested Clase — burst into flames.

“As a baseball fan, it was really cool,” Vogt said. “As the opponent’s manager, that was not the case.”

Three minutes later, Giancarlo Stanton launched a slider over the center field fence… and that Yankees show of power became a footnote in a New York minute.

David Fry, acquired 2.5 years ago as a player to be named later, has emerged as a postseason savant at the plate. He was an All-Star this season, thanks to a torrid first two months that saw him join Judge and Shohei Ohtani at the top of the OPS leaderboard. But in late June, shortly before Noel arrived, he suffered an elbow injury that the Guardians have kept discreet. Fry stopped playing on the field, which has hampered the club’s flexibility (although Fry, who has taken the occasional bullpen session to stay sharp, said The Athletics he could be on the defensive in no time).

He didn’t hit a home run in June or July, prompting his father to regularly text him about how much his elbow was bothering him.

“I’m like, ‘No, I just don’t hit well, Dad,’” Fry said.

No one in Cleveland will remember his second-half slump. They’ll toast his game-winning home run in Detroit, which prevented an early exit in the ALDS, and his walk-off shot Thursday night.

“I blacked out,” Fry said. “I remember looking back at the dugout halfway down the first base line and saying, ‘Okay, I just gotta make sure I touch all four bases.’”

Every now and then the baseball gods treat us to a whole lot of silliness in one night, when the rush of emotions prompts your Apple Watch to ask if you’re okay, when fans mutter “It’s over” one second and “We’re so back’ the next one, when those sitting on their living room couch grab the remote so they can press their thumb into the power button just as the 27th picks up, then throw the device on the couch when Noel dropped his black…and-white Louisville Slugger into the grass.

These were the baseball gods working overtime to bring us October goodness, a beautiful mix of tangled storylines and breathtaking momentum shifts.

“If there’s an emotion,” Vogt said, “we all felt it on both sides.”

(Top photo of David Fry and the Guardians celebrating his walk-off home run in Game 3: Lauren Leigh Bacho/MLB Photos via Getty Images)