In the Yankees' grisly fifth inning, which proved to be one of the costliest in World Series history

NEW YORK — It was right in front of them, as Aaron Boone likes to say, a chance for the 2024 New York Yankees to write a new page in the musty annals of baseball history. Never before had a team won the World Series after losing the first three games. In the first innings on Wednesday, the Yankees had reason to believe.

And then it was over, the season collapsing in a grisly fifth inning of errors that will rank among the most costly in the 120 editions of baseball's premier event. These Yankees made history, but not the way they wanted to – they are the only team to blow a five-run lead while facing elimination from the World Series.

“We all know we're going to be thinking about this for a long time,” said Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle, the losing pitcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers' 7-6 Game 5 win on Wednesday. “We can’t do anything about it now, but it will be difficult to keep in mind.”

The loss belonged to Kahnle, but the decisive inning was a group effort scarier than anything you'll see on Halloween. After four innings, the Yankees led 5-0 and the Dodgers were hitless by Gerrit Cole. After a single, Aaron Judge dropped a line drive to center field. Then Anthony Volpe hit a short-range grounder downfield and missed on his throw to third, powering it up.

With the bases loaded, Cole collected two strikeouts. Then came something that always causes trouble: a little bump from a guy named Mookie on first down at a World Series game in New York.

In 1986, Mookie Wilson's dribbler slipped under Bill Buckner's glove and led the Mets in a miraculous Game 6 comeback over the Boston Red Sox. However, we will never know whether Buckner or pitcher Bob Stanley could have hit Wilson.

This time we know: Mookie hit it – Betts, that is – and if the Yankees had simply made the play, the inning would have ended 5-0. Instead, the game was tied at the end of the inning and by midnight the season was over.

“If you give a team like the Dodgers a few extra outs, they’re going to capitalize on it,” Judge said. “But it comes back to me. I have to make this play and the other two probably won’t happen.”

The Dodgers won a pennant once, in the 1978 NLCS final, with a rally in which Gold Glove centerfielder Garry Maddox of the Philadelphia Phillies dropped a fly. Judge didn't win a Gold Glove, but he had just made a diving catch on the wall to steal from Freddie Freeman in the fourth, and he hadn't made a mistake all season.

The judge couldn't explain what happened. Was the ball wobbling on him?

“I just couldn’t do it,” he said.

Will Smith followed with a grounder to right from Volpe, the shortstop, who bounced his throw to third. As Kiké Hernández pressed the bag, the ball bounced off Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s glove.

“I thought it was my only play and just made the throw,” Volpe said, but Freeman disagreed.

“I know they gave Volpe a mistake on that play,” Freeman said, “but when you slow down and see Kiké running to third base, that's the reason for that play because he got an incredible base there -Running IQ.”

Still, after the two strikeouts that followed, the Yankees would have survived those errors had it not been for the confusing spin on a slow grounder that didn't even break the highway speed limit. It was the trickiest 49.8 mph dribbler the Yankees had ever seen.

The @Dodgers Get on the board in game 5. #WorldSeries pic.twitter.com/Mif4HgFsoO

– MLB (@MLB) October 31, 2024

“I took a bad angle on the ball,” Cole said. “I wasn't sure from the start how hard he hit. I took a direct angle to it as if I wanted to cut it off because I just didn't know how hard it hit him. And when the ball passed me, I wasn't able to cover first. None of us were, based on the spin of the baseball and his need to back it up. Just a bad read from the start.”

He added: “I think my angle to first base should be a little more aggressive to give me a chance to continue through the bag if I don't get the ball. “But I just didn't read the ball well.”

Rizzo, meanwhile, said he had to stay on the ball because of the way he spun. Such grounders are the most difficult for a first baseman to handle, he said. But misunderstandings played a role.

“I mean, pitchers are always taught to get over it, no matter what,” Rizzo said. “It was just a weird, turning play that I had to get. I think even if I had gotten there first, I don't know if I would have caught him. Balls off the bat are like a right-hander's, and they spin – I went one way, and then the ball went another way. You just have to follow it all the way because you don’t know what the ball is going to do.”

It messed everything up. Because Freeman, trailing, hit a two-run single up the middle and Teoscar Hernández hit a two-run double that clinched the game. The Yankees had an expected win rate of 92.6 percent before Betts' attack. With the lead now gone, the odds were almost even – and the Dodgers were on their way.

There's no shame in losing to a superior team, and the Dodgers had the best record in baseball. But, someone asked Chisholm, weren't the errors surprising?

“I'm a professional baseball player and I've made mistakes myself, so I can tell you this isn't particularly surprising,” he said. “But I mean, it’s baseball. Sometimes you could blink for a second and it would all be gone.”

For the Yankees, the season was over in the blink of an eye. With a 5-0 lead and their top performance, they should have ended the evening with a new itinerary to fly to Los Angeles. That in itself would have been a first: No team that had lost the first three games of a World Series had ever made it to Game 6.

But the Yankees were like a sleek sports car that never had that annoying engine light. The warnings were always there — sloppy fielding, confusing baserunning, basic mistakes — but the ride was so fun that the Yankees hoped they could still achieve their goal. Failing like that was strangely appropriate.

It was only the seventh game in World Series history in which a team lost after leading by five or more runs. However, in all other cases, the losing team had more games to play. These Yankees are finished.

“This is as bad as it gets,” Cole said. “It's the worst feeling you have. Sometimes you have to keep getting ready to believe and give yourself a chance. We kept pushing and in the end we didn't make it. It’s brutal.”

Betts' grounder and the damage it caused are now called whenever a pitcher fails to cover first base. The fact that it was only Game 5 will take away some of the appeal, historically speaking. But considering how close the Yankees were to a Game 6 – which would have shifted so much pressure to the Dodgers – the Cole/Rizzo game and the mistakes that preceded it belong on the list of memorable mistakes of the Fall Classic.

Brooklyn Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen's missed third hit in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1941 World Series ultimately cost his team a series-tying victory with the Yankees. (Getty Images)

Fred Snodgrass' dropped fly ball in 1912. Mickey Owens' dropped third strike in 1941. Don Denkinger's botched call in 1985. Buckner's error in 1986. Mariano Rivera's wild throw on a bunt in 2001. The fateful fifth inning in 2024 .

Fair enough. But also remember that Cole struggled through that inning and pitched into the seventh. And that the Yankees got the go-ahead score in the sixth, only to finally lose the lead in the eighth. And that in 54 years, no team has ever won after losing the first three games of a World Series.

“We fought,” Rizzo said. “There is no one here who should hang their head at all. It's hard to win. It is difficult to climb to the top of the mountain. And we were close.”

Close enough for the entire continent to see a World Series conclusion that will never happen.

(Top photo of Jazz Chisholm and Kiké Hernández: Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)