Many of these Sox have been there before.

Some have not and they’ll obviously see what kind of leadership still resides in the Fenway home clubhouse over the next 48 hours as Boston’s embroiled in yet another 3-1 deficit in an American League Championship Series.

The last 16 times that an ALCS went to 3 games to 1 in the series, 12 times the team with the 3-1 advantage has gone on to win the series. Three times the other team has reeled off three straight wins to take the series and shock the baseball world. The 16th time is this season’s playoff scenario.

The three teams to pull off the unlikely three-game heist of the ALCS you ask?

The Red Sox…all three times. In 1986, 2004 and then last season after falling down by a 3-1 deficit to the Cleveland Indians.

So the unlikely can certainly became another stroll down memory lane, and a time-honored baseball cliché comes into effect for Game Five: momentum in baseball only goes as far as that day’s starting pitcher.
Daisuke Matsuzaka was the best pitcher to toe the rubber thus far in the ALCS, and the Sox will again need that to happen on Thursday night.

Here are some ALCS deep thoughts/observations from Tuesday night’s game and postseason locker room:

  
--Jason Varitek may still be feeling the sting of hearing a few stray boos after popping out in the fourth inning during Monday night’s Game Three loss.

Varitek said that anything that needed to be said to the team would be done behind closed doors, but the Sox Captain was also quick to say that the crowd – which has been silent and often dormant while the Rays have trounced the Sox over the first two home games – needs to get more involved in the game. Translation: less booing of the Heart and Soul of your beloved Olde Towne Team and more cheering to pump up the spirits of the Sox: “We’ll do what we need to do. It doesn’t hurt our team to have some faith. We need to find a way to get our crowd involved and get our fans involved. Whether it’s good, bad or indifferent we’ve done a good job of handling things in-house and we’ll continue to do that. But we do need some outside support [from Sox fans].”

 

  --David Ortiz jokingly said that “it’s not the end of the world” which was obviously a joking reference to Manny Ramirez, who famously said that in Cleveland last season and received so much attention that it drew the spotlight away from guys like Dustin Pedroia and Kevin Youkilis, who struggled early last postseason. Ortiz busted out of a series-long slump when he slammed a ball to deep right field, but he saved his biggest slamming for the guys hitting in front of him in the lineup. Not good when one of your team leaders starts calling out everybody else, and it’s even worse when he starts referring to himself in the third person. Here’s Papi:

“It’ll be a tough situation. Right now we’re playing against a team that is playing like that makes it real hard. They’re performing really good especially hitting-wise. We’ve just got to come back Thursday and try to win.

The problem is that everybody is focusing on Papi not hitting, and to tell you the truth in both series – in Anaheim and with the Rays – Papi doesn’t come to the plate with men on base the whole time. If you look at it Papi probably comes to the plate with guys on base maybe four or five times. You’re not going to change the game when they’re leading by nine, 10 runs in a game.

We need to focus and stop their offense and make sure things don’t happen like they have been. They’ve been killing us. Everybody is locked in in their lineup, and you don’t see that very often. You see three or four guys, but you’d never see their entire lineup.

“You’ve still got to believe. We’ve been there before and you’ve got to just keep playing the way you did before. It’s simple.”

   --Jacoby Ellsbury grounded into 9 double plays during the season and another one during the postseason. That’s way, way, way too many GIDPs for a guy with that kind of blazing footspeed.

   --Tim Wakefield should never start another playoff game in his career for the Red Sox. Wakefield obviously still has value when he carries only a $4 million price tag for each year he wants to play in Red Stockings until he decides to hang 'em up...but his value is centered in the regular season when he chews up innings [not as many as he used to but enough to still be of value] and usually wins as many as he loses. But he's also toting a 10 plus ERA over his last handful of playoff starts and has taken his team out of too many postseason starts to get his numbered called again. Odds are he'll be back with the Sox again next year, but he should be strictly bullpen duty bound once the October tournament begins.