SMB revives title hopes–and more

INJURED Best Player June Mar Fajardo (left) celebrates with his teammates after the Beermen’s Game 4 escape. AUGUST DELA CRUZ

MORE than anything else, pride was on the line for San Miguel Beer on Sunday night at Philsports Arena in Pasig.

A defeat shy of becoming a sorry tidbit of PBA Philippine Cup history, the Beermen pumped life into their gasping title-retention bid.

“They accepted the challenge,” coach Leo Austria said of his Beermen, who will try to cut a 1-3 deficit in their best-of-seven championship series for the season’s most prestigious crown in Game 5 tomorrow at Smart Araneta Coliseum.

“They just didn’t want to be swept,” Austria said after a 110-104 victory in Game 4 which will go down as one of the most riveting contests in PBA history.

“You can never know what will happen [in this series]. I told them (Beermen) that miracles are just around the corner.”

Alaska’s comfortable lead doesn’t mirror how close this series has been, and Sunday saw the Beermen holding it together for the first time in the endgame and pull off the win.

This series could have been easily tied at this point; it could easily have been San Miguel holding that 3-0 edge, considering how close the first three games went.

No team in PBA history has ever come back from a 0-3 deficit and win a race-to-four affair. No team in all of professional sports in the world has been able to erase such a deficit and snatch a title series.

A 0-3 deficit had been erased twice before in the United States—but not in a championship duel.

It happened the first time in the 2010 semifinals of the National Hockey League when the Philadelphia Flyers forged a Game 7 and then overhauled a three-goal deficit in the rubber match to win, 4-3, and make the Stanley Cup Final.

In 2004, the Boston Red Sox matched that feat against hated Major League rival the New York Yankees to rule the American League Championship Series and march into the 100th World Series of baseball against the St. Louis Cardinals.

That Red Sox miracle was named the greatest comeback of all-time by Bleacher Report owing to the history of the rivalry and how the Sox smothered the Cardinals, 4-0, in the World Series.

This Alaska-San Miguel series also has its twists, foremost among them is the injury to June Mar Fajardo, whom Austria said could suit up for the Beermen if they manage to drag the Aces to a Game 7.

Winning the last three games would complete the most amazing rally in any series anywhere in the world. And this being the Finals, the San Miguel feat could become an item that Bleacher Report might consider as the best of all time.