Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 30

In today’s edition, the Yankees took what should have been an insurmountable 3-0 series lead with a stunning Game 3 beatdown at Fenway Park.

By the time Hideki Matsui’s piling on two-run homer in the top of the ninth inning cleared Fenway Park’s low right-center field wall, the place was more than half empty, the bars all around the Hub were filled with angry patrons slurring swear words over another lost season, and the forever tortured Red Sox appeared to be as dead as Paul Revere.

19-8.

That wasn’t some weird-score football game between the New England Patriots and New York Giants, that was the incomprehensible final score of Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS as the Yankees flat out embarrassed their arch rivals with a punishing display of offensive might.

According to nfl.scorigami.com, which tracks the score combination of every football game, there’s only been one 19-8 game ever played, and how about this for some real weirdness: The New York football Yankees were also the guys on the right end of that score as they defeated the Buffalo Bisons on Oct. 12, 1927.

As for the MLB playoffs, yeah, 19-8 was also a first, and it was an absolute debacle for the Red Sox who were now staring into the abyss of this reality: No team in baseball history had ever rallied from down three games to none deficit to win a postseason series. Not one in more than a century of hardball.

“To get destroyed like that and have a football score up there, it’s definitely embarrassing,” said Boston starter Bronson Arroyo, who gave up six runs in two innings. “I was not good. I was horrible, actually. This is as big a hole as you could dig yourself in.”

Three all-time postseason records were set in this game: At four hours, 20 minutes, it was the longest nine-inning game in history, and the 37 combined hits and 20 extra-base hits (which included eight doubles, a triple and four home runs by the Yankees) were also new standards.

In terms of just the league championship round, the Yankees’ 19 runs, 22 hits and 13 extra base-hits were the most ever, as were the 27 combined runs and 13 combined doubles. Think of all the great championship Yankee teams of the past and consider what happened on this night - none of those teams of Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, and Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson ever put up a barrage like that.

“I’m not surprised the way our ballclub is playing, but no question, you can’t expect to go in against the Red Sox and do what we did tonight,” Joe Torre said.

This was a box score that should have been sent directly to Cooperstown for display. Leading the way for New York was Hideki Matsui who not only enjoyed his second five-RBI game of the series, he tied an MLB postseason record with five hits and five runs scored, and Alex Rodriguez matched him with five runs. A-Rod also had three hits and three RBI, while Gary Sheffield went 4-for-5 with three runs scored and four driven in, and Bernie Williams had four hits and three RBI which enabled him to move into first place all-time with 47 hits and 29 RBI in league championship play.

Standing in the clubhouse afterward, Jackson, then a special advisor to George Steinbrenner, crowed, “The Bronx Bombers. You have to bring that T-shirt back out.”

Tyler Kepner of the New York Times made a great observation in his story about the game. He happened to walk past the First Baptist Church a few blocks from Fenway at the corner of Commonwealth and Clarendon, and there in the message board out front was the subject of the Sunday morning service: “Why Does God Allow Suffering?”

Red Sox fans for 85 years had been asking that very question, and it sure looked like it was going to be 86.

What was crazy about this game is that for a short period of time, it appeared it was going to be Boston’s night. Arroyo gave up three runs in the first inning as Derek Jeter walked and scored on an A-Rod double and Matsui hit the first of his two homers. But in the second, the Red Sox jumped all over Yankees starter Kevin Brown and took the lead as Trot Nixon hit a two-run homer, Bill Mueller doubled and scored on a single by Johnny Damon, and a Jeter error pushed across the fourth run.

The Yankees punched right back in the third when A-Rod led off with a homer, Sheffield walked and Matsui’s double knocked out Arroyo. Ex-Yankee Ramiro Mendoza entered and allowed both inherited runners to score on a Williams single and a balk to make it 6-4.

“We wanted to make sure we answered back in that inning,” Rodriguez said. “We knew it was going to take at least 10 runs to win the game at that point. So we just kind of got some momentum back.”

With Brown already out of the game, Boston tied it at 6-6 in the bottom half against Javier Vasquez and nearly took the lead. Orlando Cabrera slashed a bases-loaded double to center but the Yankees cut down Mueller at the plate on a perfect relay from Williams to Miguel Cairo to Jorge Posada.

The Yankees barely sniffed because in the fourth they put up five runs - the big blows a three-run Sheffield homer off Curt Leskanic and a two-run triple by Ruben Sierra off Tim Wakefield - and from there they just continued to tack on as the Red Sox, looking like George Foreman when he fought Muhammad Ali in Zaire, eventually were all punched out and hit the canvas hard.

“I was just so focused on keeping the scoring going,” Sheffield said. “I thought they’d keep scoring. But once we got the five-run lead, I thought we could blow this game out. We wanted to make a statement and we did. We’re not here to win a war of words. We’re here to win the games.”

For Matsui, it was another outstanding performance, one that had Joe Torre shaking his head in wonderment.

Since his early 2003 struggles trying to adapt to MLB pitching, Matsui had become one of the most consistently dangerous hitters on the team. There was just one tough at bat after another, and eventually he was going to pounce on the one mistake a pitcher would make.

“You think that one time he’s going to fail at driving in a big run or hitting a big home run,’’ Sheffield said of Matsui. “But he makes it looks easy. For all of us in the lineup, it relaxes everybody because he’s just so focused. Matsui is contagious. He seems to make it go. We’re not surprised anymore. We expect him to do what he’s doing.’’

Three games into the series, Matsui was 9-for-15 with four doubles, two homers, seven runs scored and 10 RBI. Not that he was alone as the Yankees had now scored 32 runs on 43 hits.

And three games into the series, the Yankees had beaten Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez in Games 1 and 2 and then bludgeoned the Red Sox in Game 3. Bleak would be the appropriate mood of the Red Sox clubhouse.

“We’re in a tough spot,” Damon said. “It was definitely an ass-whupping. They’re doing exactly what we thought we would be doing in this series. ... We felt we’d be up 3-0 right now, but those guys have found another switch.”

For Boston manager Terry Francona, there really wasn’t much he could say about what had transpired. His team needed to win four straight games against the mighty Yankees, but that could not be the message he delivered.

“Well, I think we have to try to keep it simple,” Francona said. “We show up tomorrow and our only objective, our only goal is to win tomorrow. You start looking ahead … it starts looking a little daunting if you start looking at too big of a picture. You show up tomorrow and do everything in our power to win and then we’ll go from there.”

They seemed like hollow words at the time because after this mortifying loss, if ever there was a time for a grounds crew to start painting the World Series logo on the field before a league championship series was actually over - remember that episode from the year before at Fenway? - this was certainly it.

Barring a miracle - and who believes in miracles? - Yankee Stadium was going to be hosting Game 1 of the World Series. All that was left to determine was how many days they would get to rest before playing either the Cardinals or Astros.

Or so we thought.

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Inspired by their epitaph being written after Game 3, the Red Sox stayed alive with a thrilling victory in Game 4 thanks in large part to one of the biggest stolen bases in the history of MLB and though we didn’t know it at the time, the ALCS was inexplicably and irreversibly flipped.