Inside the Yankees’ grisly fifth inning that proved one of the most costly in World Series history

NEW YORK – It was right there in front of them, as Aaron Boone likes to say, a chance for the 2024 New York Yankees to write a new page in the musty annals of baseball history. Never before had a team rallied to win the World Series after losing the first three games. In the early innings on Wednesday, the Yankees had reason to believe.

And then it was over, the season tumbling down in a grisly fifth inning with blunders that will rank among the most costly in the 120 editions of baseball’s premier event. These Yankees made history, but not the way they wanted – they are the only team to blow a five-run lead while facing elimination from the World Series.

“All of us know that’s going to be something we think about for a long time,” said Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle, the losing pitcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 7-6 victory in Game 5 on Wednesday. “There’s nothing we can do about it now, but it’s going to be a tough one to keep in the back of our minds.”

The loss belonged to Kahnle, but the pivotal inning was a group effort scarier than anything you’ll see this Halloween. After four innings, the Yankees led 5-0 and the Dodgers were hitless off Gerrit Cole. After a single, Aaron Judge dropped a line drive in center field. Then Anthony Volpe fielded a grounder at short and misfired on his throw to third for a force.

With the bases loaded, Cole rallied for two strikeouts. Then came something that’s always trouble: a little roller up along first by a guy named Mookie in a World Series game in New York.

In 1986, Mookie Wilson’s dribbler slipped under the glove of Bill Buckner, vaulting the Mets over the Boston Red Sox in a miracle Game 6 comeback. We’ll never know, however, if Buckner or pitcher Bob Stanley could have beaten Wilson to the bag.

This time, we do know: Mookie beat it out – Betts, that is – and if the Yankees had simply made the play, the inning would have ended with the score 5-0. Instead the game was tied by the end of the inning, and by midnight the season was over.

“You give a team like the Dodgers a couple of extra outs, they’re gonna capitalize on it,” Judge said. “But it comes back to me. I’ve got to make that play, and probably the other two don’t happen.”

The Dodgers once won a pennant, in the 1978 NLCS finale, with a rally that turned on a dropped fly by a Gold Glove center fielder, Garry Maddox of the Philadelphia Phillies. Judge has not won a Gold Glove, but he had just made a leaping catch at the wall to rob Freddie Freeman in the fourth and he hadn’t made an error all season.

Judge couldn’t explain what happened. Did the ball wobble on him?

“I just didn’t make the play,” he said.

Will Smith followed with a grounder to the right of Volpe, the shortstop, who bounced his throw to third. With Kiké Hernández bearing down on the bag, the ball clanged off Jazz Chisholm Jr.’s glove.

“I figured that was my only play and just pulled the throw,” said Volpe, but Freeman had a different viewpoint.

“I know they gave Volpe an error on that play,” Freeman said, “but if you slow it down and you see how Kiké ran to third base, that’s what set up that play, him having an unbelievable base running IQ there.”

Even so, after the two strikeouts that followed, the Yankees would have survived those errors if not for the confusing spin on a slow grounder that wouldn’t even break the highway speed limit. It was the trickiest 49.8 mph dribbler the Yankees had ever seen.

The @Dodgers get on the board in Game 5. #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/Mif4HgFsoO

— MLB (@MLB) October 31, 2024

“I took a bad angle to the ball,” Cole said. “I wasn’t sure, really, off the bat how hard he hit it. I took a direct angle to it, as if to cut it off, because I just didn’t know how hard he hit it. And by the time the ball got by me, I was not in a position to cover first. Neither of us were, based on the spin of the baseball and him having to secure it. Just a bad read off the bat.”

He added: “I guess my angle should be a little more aggressive to first base to give myself a chance to continue through the bag if I don’t get the ball. But I just didn’t read the ball well.”

Rizzo, meanwhile, said he had to stay back on the ball because of the way it was spinning. Grounders like that, he said, are the hardest kind for a first baseman to handle. But miscommunication played a part.

“I mean, pitchers are always taught to get over no matter what,” Rizzo said. “It was just a weird, spinning play I had to make sure to get. I think even coming through that to go to first, I don’t know if I would have gotten him. Balls off the bat like that off a righty, and they’re spinning – I was going one way and then the ball kicked another way. You’ve just got to follow it all the way in, because you don’t know what that ball is gonna do.”

What it did was mess up everything. Because Freeman, down in the count, punched a two-run single to center, and Teoscar Hernández bashed a two-run, game-tying double. The Yankees had an expected winning percentage of 92.6 percent before Betts’ at-bat. Now that the lead was gone, the odds were nearly even – and the Dodgers were on their way.

There is no shame in losing to a superior team, and the Dodgers had the best record in baseball. But, someone asked Chisholm, weren’t the errors surprising?

“I’m a professional baseball player and I’ve made errors myself, so I can tell you, it’s not super surprising,” he said. “But, I mean, it’s baseball. Sometimes you could blink for one second and everything could be gone.”

For the Yankees, the season was gone in that blink. With a 5-0 lead and their ace cruising, they should have ended the night with a fresh itinerary for a flight to Los Angeles. That, in itself, would have been a first: no team that lost the first three games of a World Series had ever made it to Game 6.

But the Yankees were like a sleek sports car that never addressed that pesky engine light. The warnings were always there – sloppy fielding, baffling base running, fundamental foul-ups – but the ride was so fun that the Yankees hoped they could reach their destination anyway. Failing this way was oddly appropriate.

It was only the seventh game in World Series history in which a team lost after leading by five or more runs. In every other instance, though, the losing team had more games to play. These Yankees are finished.

“This is as bad as it gets,” Cole said. “It’s the worst feeling that you have. You have to keep sometimes willing yourself to believe, to give yourself a chance. We kept pushing and pushing and ultimately we came up short. It’s brutal.”

The grounder by Betts, and the damage it wrought, will be cited now whenever a pitcher fails to cover first base. The fact that it was only Game 5 will take away some of the sting, historically. But considering how close the Yankees were to a Game 6 – which would have shifted so much pressure to the Dodgers – the Cole/Rizzo play and the errors that preceded it belong on the list of memorable Fall Classic miscues.

Fred Snodgrass’ dropped fly ball in 1912. Mickey Owen’s dropped third strike in 1941. Don Denkinger’s blown call in 1985. Buckner’s error in 1986. Mariano Rivera’s wild throw on a bunt in 2001. The Fateful Fifth Inning in 2024.

Fair enough. But remember, too, that Cole plowed through that inning and pitched into the seventh. And that the Yankees scraped together a go-ahead run in the sixth, only to lose the lead for good in the eighth. And that no team in 54 years had won even once after losing the first three games of a World Series.

“We fought,” Rizzo said. “There’s no one here that should hang their head at all. It’s hard to win. It’s hard to climb to the top of the mountain. And we were close.”

Close enough to see across the continent to a World Series conclusion that will never be.

(Top photo of Jazz Chisholm and Kiké Hernández: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)