Anthony Rizzo wasn’t making a plea or demand when it comes to fans bringing the noise and electricity Monday night at Yankee Stadium.
Loud sellout crowds have been a part of each of the four home games the Yankees have played so far this postseason.
It’s just, Rizzo said, the expected cacophonous throng packing the Stadium for its first World Series game since 2009 is something the Yankees simply need.
“More than ever right now, for sure,” Rizzo said late Saturday night in the visitor’s clubhouse after the Yankees fell in an 0-2 hole with a 4-2 loss to the Dodgers in Game 2 of the World Series. “They back us, they pump us up, they put pressure on other teams. The Bronx is a special place when that stadium’s rocking. We feel it and we get rolling. So we’re going to need every ounce of their energy coming into Monday. Take care of business and keep going.”
The Yankees’ task is a tall one, but not an impossible one.
Though 45 of 56 times the team taking a 2-0 lead in the World Series has ended up winning it, the Yankees have only to look to their own history for inspiration.
Joe Torre’s first team lost the first two games of the 1996 Series to Atlanta before winning four straight for what was the franchise’s first title since 1978 (and first of four in a five-year stretch). They’re the last team to rally from an 0-2 hole in a World Series.
And, as two prominent Yankees, Rizzo being one, can attest, strange things happen this time of year.
Rizzo was a star on the 2016 Cubs’ team, who snapped the franchise’s 108-year drought without a championship. But to get there, they first had to come back from a 3-1 deficit to Cleveland — itself now holding the longest active drought without a World Series title (1948) — and winning both Game 6 and then an all-time Game 7 on the road.
“The mindset was win one game, and everything will take care of itself,” Rizzo said.
Though not in as historically significant a World Series as Rizzo, Juan Soto’s in…
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