The Red Sox rallied against the Dodgers after Chris Sale's dugout pep talk
As Ernest Lawrence Thayer would say, the outlook wasn't brilliant for the Red Sox in the seventh inning of Game 4 of the World Series. They were losing, 4-0, and dangerously close to seeing the Dodgers knot the series up at two games apiece.
That's when Red Sox ace
At the time, Sale's outburst was easy to make jokes about. It would be hard to say that his extreme gesticulating wasn't funny!
"Chris, in the dugout screaming? My English is very limited, so I didn't understand what he was saying," joked manager Alex Cora.
However, it wasn't long after Sale's outburst that the Red Sox offense finally began to show signs of life after scoring just two runs in the previous 27 innings. It all began when
Finally, the Red Sox exploded for five runs in the ninth against the weary Dodgers bullpen, keyed by big hits from Pearce and
Much like David Ortiz in Game 4 of the 2013 World Series and
After the game,
"Oh, my god, he was mad at us. I think that kind of lit a fire under everybody. We didn't want to see him mad anymore. So we decided to start swinging the bats a little bit. And hopefully brings that fire tomorrow."
Devers agreed with Holt. "At that moment, that was huge because it motivated us," he said. "It scared me a little bit because I had never seen him yell like that and the words that he was saying, I had never heard that come from him before. But, you know, we came out sluggish and that moment helped us get motivated for the rest of the game."
Next up, Sale will have a chance to secure his first World Series ring when the Red Sox play Game 5 on Sunday. If called upon for another speech, there's no doubt that he'll be raring to go.