The Yankees win Game 4 of the World Series behind Anthony Volpe's “big hit.”

NEW YORK — For about two hours Tuesday night, the most surreal moment of Anthony Volpe's life occurred in the third inning of Game 4 of the World Series.

The New York Yankees' homegrown shortstop, a lifelong Yankees fan who lived on the Upper East Side before his family moved across the Hudson to Jersey when he was in fourth grade, provided his club with the oxygen it needed in the face of… Retirement needed.

It came in the form of a grand slam against Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Daniel Hudson – a 107.6 mph rocket that landed a few rows behind the left field wall at Yankee Stadium – giving the Yankees a lead they didn't want to give up anymore and an 11:4 defeat reduced the deficit in the series to 3:1. Fifteen years after attending the Yankees' last World Series parade in 2009, back when he was 8 years old and his teeth were no longer so straight, he stood on the field in pinstripes at the World Series.

Nothing could top it. And then, about two hours later, something happened.

“VOL-PE! VOL PE! VOL-PE!”

The chants originated with the Bleacher Creatures before spreading to the rest of the building, with one dropping out in the ninth inning. They echoed while Volpe stood at shortstop. That moment, he said, surpassed the Grand Slam.

“Number one,” Volpe said. “Definitely number one.”

The Yankees were desperate to break through after scoring seven runs in the first three games of this clash between the Titans on the Coast. In the three losses, they failed to capitalize on scoring opportunities and were pushed to the brink, having not had a lead since Nestor Cortes gave up the walk-off grand slam in Game 1.

Early Tuesday, it looked like it would be even more so when Freddie Freeman hurled a laser over the short porch in right field and hit a two-run home run, ending his streak of World Series games at one Home runs extended to a record six. The swing left the sellout crowd disheartened. The Yankees then missed two scoring chances in the first two innings. The script seemed familiar to me.

The Yankees left two runners behind in the first inning. Then, in the second, Volpe's decision to hit a ball that Austin Wells hit off the wall in center field might have cost a run. Instead of Wells hitting a triple, Volpe advanced just 90 feet and Wells settled for a double. Alex Verdugo scored Volpe on a groundout, but that was the only run the Yankees produced.

“It’s totally up to me,” said Volpe, who finished 2 of 4 with a walk and three runs scored. “It’s not a hard read, one we practice, one the Little Leaguers do.”

Volpe avenged his mistake with the most important hit of his life in the third inning. Hudson, the second reliever the Dodgers used on their scheduled bullpen day, hit Aaron Judge with a pitch, gave Jazz Chisholm Jr. a single and walked Giancarlo Stanton to load the bases. With Anthony Rizzo out, Volpe came to the plate with two outs looking for a fastball. But he recognized the spin of Hudson's slider after facing him in Game 3 and pounced, setting the building on fire and changing the course of the series.

“I think I pretty much fainted when I saw it fly over the fence,” Volpe said.

It was the Yankees shortstop's first postseason home run and the first grand slam by a Yankee since Tino Martinez hit in Game 1 of the 1998 World Series against the San Diego Padres. At 23 years, 184 days, Volpe became the youngest Yankee with a grand slam in the World Series since Mickey Mantle in 1953.

“That big hit, we were looking for it,” Verdugo said. “It happened and it just felt like a big exhale in the dugout and everyone was able to play loose and play freely again and just worry about moving on and keeping the lead.”

The Dodgers cut the lead to one in the fifth inning with two runs, both to Luis Gil, but the Yankees' bullpen thwarted them from there. Five Yankees relievers kept the Dodgers scoreless in the final four innings as the offense worked against the Dodgers' plethora of relievers.

Wells, who entered the night 4-for-43 with 19 strikeouts in the postseason, hit a solo home run to the upper deck in the sixth inning. Two innings later, the Yankees finally opened the game with a five-run outburst, fueled by Gleyber Torres' three-run home run while forcing Dodgers right-hander Brent Honeywell to throw 50 pitches.

The cushion allowed Yankees manager Aaron Boone not to use Luke Weaver, the team's best reliever, in the ninth inning after the right-hander pitched 1⅓ innings, which should make Weaver available in Game 5, when the Yankees will try to win the first To become the team to ever force a Game 6 after trailing 3-0 in a World Series.

“One thing about us is we love history and we love making history,” Chisholm said. “So for us, we’re just out here trying to make history.”

The Yankees still have a chance to make history and become the second team to ever get out of a 3-0 hole in a postseason series because of Volpe's third-inning swing.

At that point, Volpe was 1-for-12 with two walks and seven strikeouts in the World Series, losing his strong start to the playoffs. After slashing .243/.293/.657 in the regular season, the second-year shortstop batted .310 with an OPS of .804 in the American League Championship Series. He swung harder than he did in the regular season and walked more – eight walks in 37 plate appearances. He attributed the improvement to his work during the Yankees' four days off between the regular season and the start of the AL Division Series.

On Tuesday, the effort produced a night he imagined “probably every night” as a child, with two moments he will never forget.

“It’s pretty crazy to think about,” Volpe said. “It's my dream, but it was all my friends' dreams, all my cousins' dreams, probably my sister's dream too. But winning the World Series was by far the most important thing. Nothing else compares. “So we still have a lot of work to do.”