Even Yanks can appreciate ALCS Game 3 – and that includes former Cleveland hero Davis

CLEVELAND — The Yankees' players, as disappointed as they were, had some appreciation for what they were a part of.

“Two good teams want it,” Aaron Judge said late Thursday night after the Yankees' 7-5, 10-inning loss to the Guardians in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series, a game that featured four home runs – two by each team The eighth inning was David Fry's final walk-off home run against Clay Holmes. “Just one great shot after another. That’s where they were able to achieve the last big momentum.”

Anthony Rizzo had the most unusual perspective of all when it came to this kind of late-inning craziness.

As he put it with a weary smile: “I was standing right on that field, I think in the eighth inning, when a big home run tied the game. Luckily it wasn’t Game 7.”

In fact, Rizzo was the Cubs' first baseman in 2016 when they won a classic Game 7 of the World Series at Progressive Field, beating Cleveland 8-7 in 10 innings.

The Cubs, playing in the World Series for the first time since 1945 and trying to win their first championship since 1908, built a 5-1 lead in the fifth inning and held by four on an unseasonably warm evening in Cleveland Outs to take a 6-3 lead before all hell broke loose in the eighth.

With a runner on, two outs and the Cubs leading 6-4, Rajai Davis, choking on the bat, lined a 2-and-2, 97 mph fastball from Aroldis Chapman just over the railing to the 19-footer -Wall-In Leftfield to tie the score at 6 and shake the stadium.

Just as Progressive Field was shaking in the ninth inning Thursday night, pinch hitter Jhonkensy Noel hit a two-out, two-run home run off the previously unbeatable Luke Weaver to even the score at 5-5. That unexpected blast was preceded by a game-winning two-run home run by Judge off Emmanuel Clase early in the eighth to tie the score at 3-3. This was immediately followed by a home run by Giancarlo Stanton that gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead. Clase, who posted a 0.61 ERA this season and has a cutter that often reaches 98 to 101 mph, had allowed exactly two home runs in the regular season.

In one of those great coincidences that often characterize the sport, Davis, who retired from the Mets after the 2019 season and is now Major League Baseball's senior director of on-field operations, was in attendance Thursday night.

“This is at the top. That's one of my all-time favorites,” Davis, who played 14 seasons in the majors, said Friday about where Thursday night's game ranks for him on the list of games he has either played in or witnessed. (Of course, and fittingly, 2016's Game 7 will likely never be knocked off the top spot.)

Davis said he felt “goosebumps” as he ran the bases after his home run in Game 7, and that he felt something similar Thursday, particularly after Noel's home run because it ranked higher on the shock scale than Fry's.

“I definitely felt it. “I felt some goosebumps,” Davis said. “I felt the magnitude of the situation, like this was a big moment. I sensed that and sensed it – that’s a home run of magnitude.”

No one on the Yankees would dispute that. And while no one wearing the road grays felt goosebumps when they saw Noel's home run or Fry's home run, they knew they had played a game that would be talked about for some time.

“Look, it's a great game to witness,” said Aaron Boone, whose 11th-inning home run against Tim Wakefield at old Yankee Stadium ended a classic Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS. “It was playoff baseball. Both teams kept coming up with haymakers and big offenses, big moments from two really good bullpens. They have outlasted us. They had one more good shot than us.”

Rizzo said, “This is a great baseball game if you're a fan watching on both sides and just being a fan of the game. “It's hard to be on that end.”

Notes and quotes: Ian Hamilton was removed from the Yankees' ALCS roster Friday afternoon because of the right calf injury he suffered in Game 3 and replaced by backup Mark Leiter Jr. According to MLB rules when it comes to injuries in the postseason, Hamilton will not be eligible for the World Series if the Yankees get there. Before Friday's game, Boone said Hamilton suffered a Grade 1 calf strain. . . Austin Wells, 2-for-26 with 12 strikeouts this postseason as of Friday – including 0-for-10 in the ALCS – was relegated to eighth Friday by the mop-up effort. He was replaced in cleanup by Jazz Chisholm Jr., who went 4 of 27 in the first seven games of the postseason.