It was over. Honestly, if you were sitting in Fenway Park on the night of October 17, 2004, you weren't thinking about a comeback. You were thinking about 1918. You were thinking about Bucky Dent and Aaron Boone. The Boston Red Sox Yankees 2004 rivalry had reached a point of absolute, soul-crushing redundancy for anyone wearing a Sox cap.
The Yankees were up three games to none. They had just humiliated Boston 19-8 in Game 3. It wasn't just a lead; it was a demolition. No team in the history of Major League Baseball had ever come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. Not one.
Then came the ninth inning of Game 4.
The stolen base that broke the curse
Mariano Rivera was on the mound. He’s the greatest closer to ever live, a man whose cutter was so precise it felt like a surgical tool. Kevin Millar drew a walk. He wasn't fast. He was, by his own admission, "kind of a hack" on the basepaths. Terry Francona sent in Dave Roberts to pinch-run.
Everyone in the building knew Roberts was going. Rivera knew. Jorge Posada knew. Derek Jeter knew. Roberts took his lead, dived back on a pickoff attempt, and then he just... went. He slid under the tag by a fraction of an inch. That single moment is arguably the most important stolen base in the history of the sport. Bill Mueller singled him home, and the world started to tilt on its axis.
Dave Roberts basically saved a century of baseball history with one head-first slide.
David Ortiz and the art of the long night
If Game 4 was the spark, David Ortiz was the furnace. "Big Papi" ended Game 4 with a walk-off home run in the 12th inning, but people forget how grueling Game 5 was. It went 14 innings. Fourteen. That’s nearly six hours of high-tension baseball where every single pitch felt like a heart attack.
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The Yankees were five outs away from the World Series in Game 5. They blew it. Ortiz drove in the winning run again with a bloop single that dropped in front of Bernie Williams. Suddenly, the Boston Red Sox Yankees 2004 series wasn't a sweep. It was a fight.
You could see the panic starting to set in on the New York side. It wasn't loud, but it was there. Joe Torre, usually a statue of calm, started looking a bit more haggard. The Yankee Stadium crowd, usually a wall of noise, started to get that "oh no, not like this" feeling.
Curt Schilling and the literal blood on the mound
Then we go back to the Bronx for Game 6. This is where the legend transcends sport and enters the realm of the surreal. Curt Schilling had a torn tendon sheath in his right ankle. The team's doctors performed a "simulated" tendon repair—basically stitching his skin to his deep tissue to keep the tendon from flopping around.
It shouldn't have worked.
As Schilling pitched, the sutures started to pull. Blood began to seep through his sock. By the time the cameras zoomed in on that red stain, the visual became the definitive image of the Boston Red Sox Yankees 2004 postseason. He went seven innings. He gave up one run. It was a gutsy performance that felt more like a medieval battle than a ballgame.
The Yankees had a moment of controversy too. Alex Rodriguez hit a grounder, and as Bronson Arroyo went to tag him, A-Rod slapped the ball out of Arroyo's hand. It was bush league. The umpires huddled, called him out, and sent the runners back. The "slap" became a symbol of Yankee desperation.
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Game 7: The inevitable collapse of an empire
By the time Game 7 rolled around, the Yankees were ghosts. Kevin Brown started for New York and got shelled. Johnny Damon, who had been struggling the entire series, hit a grand slam that silenced the Bronx.
The final score was 10-3. It wasn't even close.
The Red Sox didn't just win; they exorcised eighty-six years of demons in the house of their biggest rival. When the final out was recorded—a grounder to Keith Foulke—there wasn't even a massive celebration at first. It was more like a collective exhale from the entire New England region.
Why the numbers actually matter
People talk about the "vibe" of 2004, but the statistics of that comeback are statistically improbable. Before this series, MLB teams down 3-0 were 0-25 in postseason history. The Red Sox had to win four straight games, two of them in extra innings, against a team that had won 101 games in the regular season.
- Mariano Rivera's Blown Save: He was 25-for-25 in save opportunities that year before Roberts stole second.
- The Ortiz Factor: David Ortiz hit .387 with 3 home runs and 11 RBIs in the series.
- The Bullpen: Keith Foulke pitched in all four wins, throwing over 100 pitches as a closer in a single week.
It was a total system failure for New York and a total alignment of the stars for Boston.
What most people get wrong about the 2004 ALCS
A lot of casual fans think the Red Sox won the World Series against the Yankees. They didn't. They won the American League Championship Series. They still had to go play the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
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But here is the truth: The World Series was a formality. The Red Sox swept the Cardinals in four games, but nobody really cared about the trophy as much as they cared about beating the Yankees. The real "World Series" happened in those seven nights in October against New York.
Another misconception is that the 2004 Red Sox were underdogs in terms of talent. They weren't. They had the second-highest payroll in baseball. They had Pedro Martinez, Manny Ramirez, and Curt Schilling. They were "The Idiots," sure, but they were incredibly expensive, highly talented idiots.
The lasting impact on the rivalry
The Boston Red Sox Yankees 2004 series changed the DNA of the rivalry. Before 2004, the Yankees had this aura of invincibility. They were the "Evil Empire." After 2004, the spell was broken. Since that night, the Red Sox have won four World Series titles. The Yankees? Just one.
It shifted the power dynamic of the AL East for a generation. It turned "The Curse of the Bambino" into a marketing slogan rather than a terrifying reality for Sox fans.
How to revisit the magic of 2004
If you want to dive deeper into this specific moment in time, don't just watch the highlights. The highlights don't capture the tension.
- Watch "Four Days in October": It's the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary that uses archival footage to show the locker room atmosphere. It’s the best piece of media on the subject.
- Read "Faithful" by Stephen King and Stewart O'Nan: They wrote a chronicle of the 2004 season from a fan's perspective. It captures the neurosis of being a Red Sox fan perfectly.
- Check the Box Scores: Go to Baseball-Reference and look at the play-by-play of Game 5. Look at how many times the Yankees were one strike away from ending it.
The 2004 comeback wasn't just a sports story. It was a lesson in the impossibility of "inevitable" outcomes. It proved that in baseball, as long as you have one out left, you have a chance. Even against Mariano Rivera. Even with a bloody sock. Even with 86 years of failure on your shoulders.