The Chicago Cubs are still down three games to one in the NLCS despite winning Game 4 against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday night, but they’re hoping that they can be a team that makes some history.
The Cubs are the 35th team in MLB history to trail three games to none in a best of seven series. Only one of those teams, the 2004 Boston Red Sox, has ever come back from that deficit, and the Cubs have someone in their front office that is intimately familiar with how the comeback was launched.
That person is team President Theo Epstein, who was the general manager of the Red Sox when they embarked on their epic comeback.
In that series, the Red Sox not only had to take down a Yankees team that had eliminated them in heart-wrenching fashion in 2003 (ask a Red Sox fan about Aaron Boone), but they also had to beat some of the best players to ever play the game.
One of those players was Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, and he was defeated in Game 4 with a little bit of help from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
In that game, Roberts pinch-ran for Kevin Millar with Rivera on the mound. With Bill Mueller at the plate, Roberts stole second base, and later scored when Mueller hit a single to center field to tie the game at 4-4.
In extra innings, David Ortiz launched a game-winning home run to give the Red Sox their first victory of the series, and it set the stage for one of the most epic comebacks in the history of professional sports.
Chicago Baseball
Like the Cubs, the Red Sox were at home for Games 4 and 5 of that series, against a team that they had played in the previous year’s Championship Series, and faced the prospect of having to go on the road for Games 6 and 7 if they were able to hold serve for a second time on their home field.
With the connections between that series and this series, Cubs players are hoping that they can write some history of their own, and that they can erase a 3-1 series deficit for the second year in a row.
