It’s deja vu all over again: Yankees’ Gary Sanchez pulls a Yogi Berra in Game 2 ALDS win

Gary Sanchez homered twice and drove in four runs on Saturday night when the Yankees evened their best-of-five ALDS with the Boston Red Sox at a game apiece.

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BOSTON — One of the things that stands out about Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez’s personality is his even-keel and demeaner.

He’s no Luke Voit running around in the dugout like a mad man celebrating his home runs and he’ll probably never make like vintage Paul O’Neill smashing a water cooler after a bad at-bat.

Yankees’ takeaways from ALDS Game 2 win over Red Sox

Sanchez was did show some rare excitement Saturday during and after the best game of his career, a two-homer, four-RBI performance in a 6-2 Yankees win at Fenway Park that evened their best-of-five ALDS with the Boston Red Sox at a game apiece.

First and foremost, Sanchez was thrilled about this badly needed Yankees win, and he was very happy about being a major contributor to a postseason victory after struggling so much this season.

And during his post-game presser, Sanchez clearly was proud of himself when hearing one of the game’s most interesting sidenotes.

It wasn’t learning that his 479-foot, second-inning bomb to left center off Red Sox starter David Price went a lot further than the 445-foot, tape-measure blast that Aaron Judge hit off the lefty in the first inning.

“Everybody knows that Judge has way more power than me,” Sanchez said. “I don’t have to tell that to anybody. But a homer is a homer.”

A homer is a homer … but two homers as a Yankees catcher in a playoff game was like, well, as the late, great Yogi Berra would say, “deja vu all over again.”

When the Yankees won their 17th World Series with a Game 7 win over the Brooklyn Dodgers on Oct. 10, 1956 at Ebbetts Field, Berra homered twice catching Johnny Kucks’ three-hit shutout.

Before then and for the next 62 years after, no Yankees catcher had a two-homer game … not even Hall of Famer Bill Dickey or Elston Howard or Thurman Munson or Jorge Posada.

Sanchez joined Berra on Saturday night, and the 25-year-old Dominican was touched hearing so while seated in a Fenway Park press conference room next to Spanish to English team interpretor Marlon Abreu.

“I definitely did not know that,” Sanchez said. “But I can tell you it’s an honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as him, a legend of baseball. It’s an honor to me.”

If Berra was still around, – he passed at age 90 in September 2015 – he could have responded with another Yogi-ism … “Congratulations, I knew the record would stand until it was broken.”

Berra hit 12 postseason homers in 75 games – all World Series games – and Sanchez already is almost halfway there with five homers in 16 career postseason games over the last two Octobers.

His No. 1 mission is to start catching up to Berra in World Series championships as a player. In fact, he’s hoping to start making a small dent into Yogi’s 10-0 lead later this month.

His standout game on Saturday night brought the Yankees one win closer.

Outfielder Brett Gardner alluded to that after Game 2 when he was asked how he and Sanchez endured so many struggles during the Yanks’ 100-win regular season.

“The opportunity to win a World Series,” Gardner said. “I think it’s that simple. That’s why we play the game. I think when you’re young, you want to get to the big leagues and you want to stay in the big leagues, and then once you’re around a little bit you realize you don’t know how many opportunities you’re going to get at this.

“We’ve got a really, really talented team. Obviously we might not have had the regular season that we wanted – we would have much rather won the division – but the position we’re in now, it really doesn’t matter. The opportunity to win, that’s what it’s all about. This time of the year, that’s all that matters.”

That’s all that matters to Sanchez, who is hoping his season of struggles leads into an October hot streak that helps produce Yankees wins.

“We’re playing the really exciting baseball, so to have an opportunity now to keep on playing and produce at this time, it’s actually more important,” he said.

As Yogi would say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Randy Miller may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @RandyJMiller. Find NJ.com on Facebook.