It wasn’t enough that Freddie Freeman had reintroduced himself to the short porch in right field, silencing a rabid crowd before it could even clear its throat. And it wasn’t enough that, despite the best efforts of the boys down the right field line to swipe a baseball from Mookie Betts’ glove, the Yankees couldn’t get a run back.

No. Then, almost one inning later, there were 49,354 people all shouting the same question, it seemed, at the same time:

“What the hell is he doing?!?!?”

That particular questioning was directed at Anthony Volpe, who had been on second base but somehow managed to only advance to third base on an Austin Wells one-out drive that came inches from the wall had been removed. Volpe stood at third base and understood the pleas perfectly. He punched his thigh.

‘I have to get better,’ he thought to himself.

He scored a few minutes later on a grounder by Alex Verdugo, causing minimal damage. Still: A day after the Yankees had slowed their momentum by sending out a runner they shouldn’t have in Giancarlo Stanton, a moment when the third base coach was just a little too reckless, they were now in danger because Volpe was only a runner. a bit too careful.

Now Volpe walked to the plate an inning later. The bases got loaded, bottom of the third. They had also been eliminated three days earlier, in the top of the ninth inning, Dodger Stadium, when just a single could have tied Game 2 at 4-4. Instead, he had swung at a Blake Treinen pitch, a ball that landed about two feet wide of the strike zone.

“He’s still learning some things,” Aaron Boone had said a day later. “But he learns them pretty quickly.”

Anthony Rizzo had just dropped out for the second out. The Yankees had clogged the bases all night so far and had only one run to show for it. Daniel Hudson was one field away from pulling a new plug out of the wall, bringing everyone a little closer to winter.

“Keep it simple,” Volpe told himself. “And be on time for the stove.”

Hudson didn’t go with the heating. He went with a slider, which curled into the strike zone at 90 miles per hour. Volpe took a full cut. And saw him fly.

“Honestly, I was just messing around,” he’d say, “and then I blacked out.”

Everyone else enjoyed every second of the ball’s 400-foot path over the wall, right where the red Budweiser sign meets the red State Farm sign in left-center field. The crowd – so nervous, so tense, so full of fear and unease – let out a roar that could be heard at the Montauk Point Lighthouse. The Yankees dugout was Delta House.

“That was sick,” said Wells, who would play a game of his own, adding a home run to his earlier double and joining forces with his old minor league running buddy to lead the Yankees to an 11-4 victory to push into Game 4. of this 120th World Series, keep the season alive for at least another twenty hours, keep a touch of summer alive.

“When he hit that ball, I knew it was hit hard and I knew we were going to score some runs,” Wells said. “But when it went over the wall… that was pretty cool, looking from the circle on the deck.”

They scored four on that one swing, and suddenly it was 2-1 down, 5-2 up and suddenly, for the first time since the 10th inning of Game 1, it was the Dodgers chasing the Yankees and not the other way around. Suddenly, fans scrapped plans for an Irish vigil and instead got to work trying to shake up the staunch Dodgers.

And for one night they did.

And so the Yankees survive at least one more night, still understanding the tough odds they face, but they must also know: While it’s true that no team has ever recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win the To win a World Series, six of them have come back from a 3-1 deficit.

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And that’s where the Yankees are now. Thanks to the only guy in the room who knows what the Canyon of Heroes looks and feels like. Fifteen years ago he was a child who skipped school (with parental permission). Now it’s still a factor that he gets a float all his own, all thanks to seizing a moment and delivering for the team he adored as a kid.

“He loves being a Yankee, and he loves the guys he gets to do this with every day,” Boone said. “What they have in that room is real.”

And what they have in front of them is also real: another night at Yankee Stadium, where they will take all their luggage while waiting for a cross-country flight. Their ace on the mound, Gerrit Cole.

And a full tank of gas, thanks mostly to a Yankees fan who grew up to be a Yankees shortstop and an October Yankees hero of the first order. Sometimes real life really beats the movies.