TIME IS FLYING BY: 21 Years Ago Tonight Kevin Millar and David Ortiz Started The Most Improbable Comeback In Sports History

It's been two decades since David Ortiz went yabo off Paul Quantrill to somehow preserve the Red Sox' chances in the ALCS. Let that one sink in.

My birthday was earlier this week, and I have now officially spent more of my life after the 2004 comeback than before it, and for some reason, that realization hits harder than the actual birthday did. 

Twenty-one fucking years. 

How???

The comeback is now old enough to drink. 

In my brain, it still feels like last month, like I’m still that bleary-eyed college kid in Chicago pacing around a dorm common room with a sick feeling in my stomach, praying for something that felt like it had already slipped away.

The crazy thing is I even remember the pre-game dread- the shrugging gallows humor of a fanbase bracing for one more sucker punch to the ribs. And then this flicker of Millar swagger popping through the gloom. Him going around basically campaigning like a street preacher before batting practice- “Don’t let us win tonight.” 

You could hear the smirk behind it, that “because if we do, you’re in trouble” subtext. But at the time, it felt ludicrous. Millar was a hired gun who hadn't the slightest fucking clue about the misery Red Sox fans had endured at the hands of the Yankees up until that night. It was basically adding insult to injury. It sounded like nonsense optimism at the time- a guy whistling past the graveyard- but to his credit, twenty-one years later it now feels and sounds like prophecy. The bravado of a man who already knew the script was about to turn. 

Absolutely preposterous. 

It sounded like a guy refusing to accept hospice care. A bluff, or a rally cry nobody asked for. But the weird thing about baseball is sometimes belief starts stupid and then, little by little, starts looking like strategy.

Game 4 itself didn’t start like a miracle. It started like obligation. Like showing up to see whether the piano would fall on our heads or if they'd at least give us a more dignified exit. Friends I knew back home dumped their tickets. Selling them for pennies on the dollar to anybody masochistic enough to pay for the torture. 

"El Duque" vs. Derek Lowe

The early innings were not exactly a sign from heaven. Everything felt fragile. Boston's offense looked like it was swinging underwater. Johnny Damon couldn’t square anything up to save his life. Every Yankee at-bat felt like a threat waiting to balloon into a five-run hole, and every Red Sox baserunner felt like a minor miracle that would probably die stranded. 

It wasn’t agony in a dramatic way. I was just that slow bleed-out brand of hopelessness Red Sox fans knew all too well. 

The kind where you start bracing for Dan Shaughnessy obituary in inning three.

A-Rod 2-run homer in the top of the third to give New York the lead.

By the mid innings, the night had already become long enough that dread turned into a kind of numb focus. (Sidebar- kids today will sadly never know the feeling of a routine 4-5 hour 9-inning Red Sox vs. Yankees contest) 

It felt like every pitch was life or death until Ortiz stepped to the plate in the fifth, with the bases loaded, and delivered a 2-run single to give the Red Sox a one-run lead.

Somehow, Boston wasn't dead. Far from it, actually. Fenway exploded. 

Matsui got on with a one-run triple (he was unreal that series), in the sixth, and then Williams scored him on a fluke infield chopper and it felt like once again, the Red Sox had blown their shot.

Later in the inning Tony Clark hit a routine grounder to 2nd with the bases loaded only for it to be bobbled, scoring Posada and giving New York the lead. 

A cloud of dread descended over the ballpark.

Mariano Rivera warming in the bullpen felt like a funeral bell tolling early.

But then the unthinkable happened...

Kevin Millar reached first on the rarest of walks from Rivera

And then Dave Roberts pinch-ran for him.

Everybody in the country knew he was taking second base. Rivera tried his best to keep him honest before throwing the perfect setup pitch for Posada to dig out and try to gun him down. Jeter's tag couldn't have been more perfect and even though we've all seen it a million times, I still can't believe he was safe.

Then Bill Mueller did the unthinkable and sent a 99 mph cutter back up the middle to drive in the tying run and inexplicably breathe life back into Boston.

Then Rivera remembered he was Mariano Rivera and fanned Manny, and got Ortiz to pop-up with the winning runner 90 feet away. And we were off to extra innings. 

There was Ortiz- just being there, looming, like the gravitational center of hope itself. 

He wasn’t a folk hero yet. Not fully. 

He was still in that chrysalis stage right before a guy becomes inevitable. And the longer the game stretched, the more his at-bats stopped feeling like plate appearances and started feeling like a dare to destiny.

When he finally came through in the bottom of the 12th, when that extra-inning swing detonated all the fatalism Boston fans had been marinating in for eighty-six years- the release was seismic. First, there was the disbelief pause, that half-second where your brain runs a systems check before your heart catches up. 

The hardest part was the feeling of conflict between wanting to lose your mind over the incredible, improbable comeback win, being quickly dampened by the realization that the Sox needed to win 3 more in a row or it didn't matter. And as Joe Buck reminded everybody, game 5's start time was only 16 hours away. 

The crazy part about it being so long ago, and having so much time to reflect and experience everything that's happened since- is realizing Millar was right all along in a way nobody understood at the time. That night wasn’t a win in so much as it was permission. It was oxygen being pumped back into a lifeless corpse. It was a blaring warning siren that a dynasty had cracked and didn’t realize it yet. "Don’t let us win tonight" wasn’t bravado, it was a spoiler.

Doug Pensinger. Getty Images.

Twenty-one years later, the myth hasn’t faded- it’s only deepened. 

I still feel that kid version of myself pacing and bargaining with the universe every time I think about it. Yah, sure grown-up life dulls a lot of things- excitement, recklessness, the willingness to believe in the impossible. But that night refuses to dull. And I know I'm not alone in that line of thinking. I'll be with buddies back home, and October 17th always gets brought up. Where people were, what they were doing. How they celebrated. What transpired during the two weeks after that. 

I’ve lived a lot of life since then, but sometimes I think the truest proof that miracles happen is that I got to see one before I even knew how rare they are. And the older I get, the more I understand that the magic wasn’t only Ortiz’s swing, it was the fact that hope found its way back into something everybody thought was as over-and-done as over-and-done can get, before anyone saw it coming.

What a fucking game.