NEW YORK – An entire stadium held its breath and feared the worst as the most powerful man in the MLB playoffs scuttled through third base like a broken car.

Home plate was Giancarlo Stanton’s destination. A combination of forces – Teoscar Hernández’s rocket arm, Stanton’s molasses legs – ensured he wouldn’t reach it.

After his Yankees had lost three runs in the fourth inning of Game 3 of the World Series, Stanton had hit a double to left just before that sad blow, scoring the Yankees’ first hit of the game. Two batters later, with two outs on the board, shortstop Anthony Volpe threw a strike of his own, a soft line drive over the shortstop’s head. Touching the turf with the ball gave the desperate home crowd a glimmer of hope, a reason to cheer, a spark of optimism.

Just 4.5 seconds later, the light went out…probably forever.

Stanton thundered down the third base line, batting gloves firmly in his left hand, his eyes fixed on his target. The Yankees’ designated hitter, who turns 35 in 11 days, helped take this ballclub to the World Series. Nobody hit more home runs this October. But while Stanton can still hit a baseball harder than virtually anyone else on planet Earth — he managed a 119.5 mph groundout on Monday — his baserun is hard to believe and even harder to watch.

Built like an Adonis and slower than a statue, Stanton has been plagued by lower body injuries in recent years. This season, his sprint speed was in the third percentile league-wide.

As Hernández caught the bouncing ball and tossed it home, disaster dawned on the scene. Ball and giant man arrived at the same time. Stanton jumped into a half-jump, a half-slide more befitting an inflatable slide at a child’s birthday party.

Catcher Will Smith didn’t even have to put a day; The gigantic runner slipped right into his perfectly placed mitt. Stanton was out – explicit and depressing. At Yankee Stadium, 49,368 frustrated souls groaned in unison, many of whom had shelled out thousands of dollars for the privilege of witnessing this confusion.

Stanton has been one of the Yankees’ few sources of offensive excellence this month; Seeing him thrown out at such a crucial moment felt helplessly disheartening, like a grandparent falling down a flight of stairs. It was a devastating moment as one of the Yankees’ few bright spots fell victim to his own physical limitations.

From that moment on, the Yankees were no longer dangerous in their 4-2 loss. Somehow they got several runners on the board in the sixth and seventh rounds, but a breakthrough felt extraordinarily unlikely throughout. Walker Buehler led their lineup, scoring five goals in five scoreless frames. The Dodgers bullpen allowed just two hits. Los Angeles’ 4-0 lead felt insurmountable all night, a hill disguised as Everest that the Yankees tried to climb with a backpack full of rocks. A two-run home run by Alex Verdugo with two strikes and two outs in the ninth nullified the shutout, but was just a footnote.

Yankees captain Aaron Judge’s struggles dominated the headlines before Game 3. He went 1-9 with six strikeouts in this World Series, but received a warm and encouraging welcome from the home crowd on Monday. After hitting a nasty cutter from Buehler in his first at-bat, Judge hit cleanly on his second at-bat and threw a fly ball to left.

The crowd, desperate for a reason, rose. But they saw what they wanted and cried out with their hearts and not with their eyes or their brains. The judge’s knock reached a measly 87.5 miles per hour and settled only faintly into Hernández’s comfortable leather. Judge finished the night 0-for-3 with a walk. His shots were better, but the results that matter at this time of year were not there.

Now the Yankees face an uphill battle and the burden of history. No team has ever recovered from a 3-0 deficit to win a World Series. Only the 2004 Boston Red Sox, against these very Yankees in the ALCS 20 years ago, are known to have ever achieved this feat in a best-of-seven postseason game.

“If you’ve seen our whole season, the ups and downs we’ve had, the good times, the bad times, we’ve been in tough situations,” Judge said afterward. “So, well, I have to keep saying it: we just have to win one game and go from there.”

After two losses in Los Angeles, the cross-country trip gave the Yankees an opportunity to restart. A new venue, some home cooking, cooler weather. But swapping the street grays for the iconic home pinstripes didn’t change the energy.

New York starter Clarke Schmidt walked the game’s first batter, the somewhat frail Shohei Ohtani, to just four pitches. The fans in the right stands making their traditional roll call hadn’t even serenaded Volpe or third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. when Ohtani arrived first with his free pass.

Things only got worse from there. Freddie Freeman, the presumptive World Series MVP, drove Ohtani home with a muffling two-run tank to right field, his third home run in the last three games. Before the Yankees had a chance to strike, they were down. And they would stay down.

This game was full of other displays of Yankees misfortune. It started with a lackluster on-court performance from Bronx-raised rapper Fat Joe, who couldn’t match the magic of Ice Cube’s West Coast set before Game 2. After turning gently at the end of the third, Juan Soto slammed his helmet into the turf in a rare show of frustration. An inning later, Judge’s flyout raised false hopes. In the sixth, Volpe swung and missed with such force that his bat flew from his hands into the Dodgers’ dugout – but he still didn’t hit anything.

By the ninth inning, the stadium’s lower bowl was half empty. And when leadoff hitter Gleyber Torres ended the game, the true believers who remained in the more favorable seats showered their beloved Bombers with a shower of boos.

It was sad and pointless, a sad excuse for a Fall Classic performance. Despite a handful of Yankees issuing a barrage of irrationally optimistic platitudes after the game, the 2024 Yankees season appears to be over.

For a World Series that generated so much hype, it’s a shame that only one team bothered to show up.