There are postseason deficits that feel temporary, and then there are the ones that force a team to confront history. The Dodgers are in the second category now, down 3-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers in the Current NLCS, and Dave Roberts is reaching back to the one comeback in MLB history that actually erased that kind of hole.
That memory comes from 2004, when Roberts was part of the Boston Red Sox team that rallied from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees. In Game 4 of that series, Roberts pinch ran in the bottom of the ninth inning and scored the tying run before the game moved into extra innings. David Ortiz then finished it with a walk-off home run in the 12th inning, and the Red Sox went on to win four straight games, then swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series.
It is not hard to see why Roberts keeps returning to that experience. The current situation is stark, but his message is not panic. He said he wants to create a sense of urgency while also keeping the group loose, bringing a little levity into a moment that can easily become suffocating. His view is simple enough: the worst outcome is already obvious, so the Dodgers might as well try something different, loosen up and leave it all out there.
That approach fits the history Roberts knows better than most. The 2004 Red Sox remain the only MLB team to come back from a 3-0 series deficit, and that matters because it gives the Dodgers something more useful than false optimism. It offers a blueprint for staying alive one game at a time, even if the odds remain brutally steep.
The pressure has shifted
Not surprisingly, the comeback talk has also changed how the series is being framed. Alex Rodriguez put the pressure squarely on the Brewers, saying he wants to see which team shows up: the one that has controlled the last three games, or the two-time champion that refused to lose. That is the right tension for a series like this. The team ahead has the lead, but the team behind has the burden of proving the past can still matter.
For the Dodgers, Roberts’ role is larger than strategy. He is asking his players to treat a 3-0 deficit not as an ending, but as an opportunity to play freer than the scoreboard suggests. It is a familiar message from a manager who once lived the only version of this comeback that has ever worked. Now the question is whether the Dodgers can turn that memory into something more than a story. They need a game, then another, and then another after that. In October, that is how history begins to look possible again.
