At what they hope was rock bottom, the Yankees looked to the top of the order.
In a lineup that includes Juan Soto and Aaron Judge and on an afternoon that Gerrit Cole was on the mound, it was new leadoff hitter Ben Rice who would not let his team lose a fifth straight game.
It was Rice — who debuted just two and a half weeks ago — who opened the scoring with a homer, all but ended the game with another and launched himself into Yankees history with a third.
It was Rice, a 25-year-old who came up through the system without much pedigree as a 12th-rounder from Dartmouth and really without a position, who became the first Yankees rookie ever to blast three home runs in one game.
Proof of his rawness could be found in his circuitous trip through the dugout after his final shot of the afternoon, trying to find the right spot for his first curtain call as teammates jostled him.
By the time Rice’s work was done, the Yankees had pounded the Red Sox, 14-4, in front of 45,504 sweaty fans in The Bronx on a sweltering Saturday.
Largely because of their fledgling first baseman, the Yankees (55-36) snapped a skid and pulled out just their fifth victory in their past 19 games.
“Kind of a legendary day,” manager Aaron Boone said after Rice became the 26th player in Yankees history to hit at least three homers in a regular-season game.
“It’s a historical day, magical day,” Cole said after he exited in the fifth inning in a one-run hole before Rice took over. “To be honest, I’m pretty thankful I get to be on the lineup card because I know he’ll remember it forever.”
“Definitely a day I’ll never forget,” Rice said with the same smile that he wore after each blast.
There are concerns up and down the rotation, including with Cole, who flashed dominance but not sharpness.
There are concerns all over the order and notably at third base, where DJ LeMahieu had shown little before adding a pair of RBI singles.
There have been new concerns over focus and hustle after effort levels were questioned in the previous two losses.
There are concerns with the bullpen after Clay Holmes and Tommy Kahnle combined to let up the tying and winning runs Friday night.
Those concerns at least temporarily disappeared as Rice’s second homer of the day disappeared deep into the right-field seats, a three-run shot that extended the lead to six and helped a struggling offense reach double-digits in the fifth inning.
Rice got the day started with a leadoff homer deep into the right-field seats.
After his fifth-inning dinger turned the game into a laugher, his seventh-inning swat guaranteed a spot in franchise lore.
Rice’s third homer into deep right (and second against Boston’s Chase Anderson) scored three more runs on an afternoon he finished with seven RBIs, matching Lou Gehrig (who did the same on July 25, 1925) for the most by a Yankees rookie in a game in franchise history (at least since the RBI became a stat in 1920).
A Boston kid who grew up a Yankees fan in enemy territory, who once wrote “Yankees Rule” on the Pesky Pole, whose family and friends were eager to see him join the rivalry, did what no other rookie in pinstripe history had done.
But Rice knows how to hit home runs.
Figuring out how to pull off a curtain call — he had to maneuver his way through the dugout, started to go up steps in the middle before he was pushed and pulled toward the entrance — took time to figure out.
“Honestly, it was happening so fast,” said Rice, who became the fifth-fastest to a three-homer game (in his 17th career contest) in MLB history, according to Elias Sports Bureau. “I think I was still coming off the high of hitting the home run, and I was just walking through the dugout and then I just hear everyone kind of yelling at me to do something. I didn’t even know what they were talking about.
“Thankfully got it in. That was pretty awesome.”
History was cool, but so was helping a team that needed it.
A day for the record books was also a day for a deep breath for a team that had not taken one in a while.
“Something he’ll never forget, and people here probably watching will never forget,” Boone said before contextualizing the game. “Obviously, much-needed.”
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