It’s the kind of moment that separates baseball from every other sport—not in the rules, but in the particular cruelty of its arithmetic. The Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending World Series champions, the team that has made October feel like a birthright for years, now find themselves staring into an abyss they never expected to see. After dropping Game 3 of the National League Championship Series to the Milwaukee Brewers, 6-2, the Dodgers trail the best-of-seven series three games to none. To keep their dream of a third consecutive World Series title alive, they must win four straight games against a Brewers team that has outplayed them in every possible way. Improbable? Absolutely. The numbers are brutal, the history overwhelming, and the task daunting beyond words. But impossible? No. That word doesn’t quite fit, and nobody knows that better than someone who was standing at the center of the greatest comeback in Major League Baseball history. David “Big Papi” Ortiz, now an MLB on FOX analyst, was the heart of the 2004 Boston Red Sox, the only team in baseball history to climb out of a 0-3 postseason deficit and win the series. And when he looked at the Dodgers after Wednesday night’s loss, he didn’t see a broken team. He saw a group that had finally reached the point of freedom.
Ortiz understands better than most just how strange the psychology of a playoff collapse can be. He lived it from the wrong end, then he lived it from the right end, and he knows that pressure is not a straight line. In 2004, the Red Sox were three outs from being swept by the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series, and then something broke open inside them. They weren’t playing to avoid embarrassment anymore. They were playing with nothing left to lose, and that made them dangerous in a way the Yankees hadn’t seen. Ortiz sees the same potential now in the Dodgers. “It’s funny how that works, because you feel more pressure at the beginning of the series than when you are 0-and-3 because once you get there, when you hit bottom like that, it feels like you have got nothing to lose,” he said after the Brewers’ win. It’s a strange kind of liberation, but in sports it’s real. The fear of failure that weighs you down early in a series vanishes when failure is already right there in the room with you. There’s no more pristine record to protect, no more unbeaten streak to defend. You’re already down. You’re already being counted out. The only thing left to do is play. That’s not a platitude; it’s a profound shift in mindset that has fueled some of the most unforgettable moments in sports history. And Ortiz, with his easy smile and heavy bat, is the living proof that it’s true.
History, however, is not kind on paper. In all best-of-seven postseason series in Major League Baseball history, teams that have taken a 3-0 lead have gone on to win the series 41 out of 42 times. Thirty-two of those series ended in sweeps. Only two teams have even forced a Game 7 after falling into that three-game hole, and only one—that 2004 Red Sox squad—has completed the impossible task of winning four in a row to take the series. The Dodgers are facing an opponent that has earned every bit of its lead. The Brewers have pitched well, hit when it mattered, and displayed the kind of unshakable confidence that often comes from being underestimated. But the Dodgers are not just any team. They have faced adversity before, twice winning the World Series and playing in October with a target on their backs for half a decade. They have the talent, the depth, and the experience to win four straight games, even if the odds say they won’t. And if there’s anyone who can speak to the mental side of that climb, it’s the men who were in the middle of the 2004 drama from both sides. On the losing side of that legendary ALCS were Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, two of the most accomplished players in Yankees history, and now, alongside Ortiz, they are teammates in the broadcast booth for MLB on FOX. Their perspective on the Dodgers’ situation is a fascinating mix of hard realism and genuine belief that the door is not entirely shut.
Alex Rodriguez put it in strikely practical terms. “The pressure is almost off them right now. Now, they just go out and win a game,” he said. He didn’t try to convince anyone that the Dodgers are going to win the series. He just pointed to the next step, the only step that matters. “And how many times have the Dodgers, over the last five years, won four in a row?… But you got to start with one pitch. You got Tyler Glasnow now on the mound tomorrow. If you win tomorrow, you got Tarik Skubal in Game 5 and then you never know. But it starts with the first pitch of the game, and you’re playing for your life, and you do not want the Brewers to celebrate on your field.” It’s a grounded, almost businesslike approach to a predicament that can feel overwhelming if you let it. You don’t win four games in one night. You win the next pitch, then the next out, then the next inning. Rodriguez knows this from years of being the target of comebacks and also, painfully, from being on the wrong side of one. His words weren’t a rallying cry. They were a reminder that no matter how deep the hole, baseball is still a game of individual moments that add up slowly. Derek Jeter, his longtime Yankees teammate and occasional rival, offered a similar view, but with a more philosophical tone. “Coming into this series, no one thought Milwaukee was going to win three games in a row. But no one expected the Yankees to win the first three games in a row against the Red Sox,” Jeter said. “We thought it was going to be evenly matched. If going into that series they said we’re going to go to seven games, everyone would have believed it. It’s the same thing here. If you’re the Los Angeles Dodgers, you cannot take the field thinking that you’re down three games. All you have to do is win one game.” That’s the trap of a 0-3 deficit—if you think about the mountain, you’ll never climb it. But if you just look at the next step, the mountain feels less insurmountable.
The most meaningful voice, though, might belong to the man inside the Dodgers’ own dugout. Dave Roberts is the manager of Los Angeles, but in 2004 he was a teammate of Ortiz on that historic Red Sox team. He had a face and a name and a stolen base that became symbolic of Boston’s turnaround—the swiped bag in the ninth inning of Game 4 that ignited the rally and saved the season. Now he is guiding a Dodgers team that finds itself in the same impossible position, and he refuses to let the weight of history define his club. When asked about the comeback after the Game 3 loss, Roberts was measured but quietly defiant. “It’s certainly possible. I’ve lived it,” he said. “I think the thing is that our guys have been battle tested, as was that team I was a part of. They know what’s at stake and, you know, we’ve won four in a row, a number of times this year. But again, we got to win tomorrow. So that’s, that’s our only focus.” It’s a simple message, but it carries a lifetime of meaning for Roberts. He knows that no one remembers the teams that made the comeback look improbable. He knows that the 2004 Red Sox are immortal not because they were the best team in baseball, but because they refused to let the inevitable become the actual. And he knows that the Dodgers, despite their recent success, are not entitled to anything more than the next pitch. His players look at him and see a man who has already walked through this particular fire. That counts for a lot in a clubhouse filled with veterans who understand how rare these chances are.
So where does that leave the Dodgers? On the edge, for sure, but also in a strange place of possibility. They have been counted out by the numbers, by the pundits, and by the cruel math of too many Octobers past. But they still have a pulse. They still have Glasnow on the mound for Game 4, and Skubal waiting in the wings. They still have a locker room full of players who have won at the highest level and a manager who has crawled out of this exact hole from the inside. They also have the wisdom of Big Papi, who reminded them not to press, not to try to get three hits in one at-bat or three outs in one pitch. “There’s no more room to go back. All you gotta do is just move forward. You hit bottom already. Let’s just let things happen. Let’s not try to get three hits in one at-bat. Let’s not try to get three outs in one pitch. Let’s go to the flow.” That’s the human truth at the heart of this entire story. Sports aren’t decided by numbers alone. They’re decided by people, by heart, by the strange and unpredictable way that fear turns into freedom, and pressure turns into purpose. The Dodgers are down three games to zero. History says they have almost no chance. But baseball is the game where ghosts come back to life, where stolen bases become legends, and where a team that looked dead can suddenly remember how to breathe. The 2004 Red Sox proved it. Dave Roberts lived it. And now, somewhere in the quiet moments before Game 4, the Dodgers have to decide whether they are ready to believe it too. The first pitch is coming, and it’s the only thing that matters. Win that pitch, then the next one. Let the flow take over. And let history worry about itself.
