It happened fast. So fast. The way great things often do. The way the great ones do them. One moment, it was cold and gray and wet and the spaces between the roars were getting longer and more distinct as the anxious murmur of impending defeat settled over Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies were six outs away from another cross-country flight and another 24 hours of the worst sort of waiting, six outs away from this National League Championship series heading back to San Diego at three-games-to-two, six outs away away from a party delayed.
And then it happened. Bryce Harper stepped to the plate.
What he did almost does not need to be told, because he has done it for two straight weeks, for nine playoff wins, for 11 games of some of the most brilliant baseball that the month of October has ever seen. But he did it, and everyone saw it the moment happened, maybe even before. All 45,000. They did not need to hear the crack. They saw that beautiful left-handed swing uncoiling through the zone. They saw the flash of the barrel as it cut a frictionless pass toward a sinker that clocked 98 on the gun. They saw the ball jump into the red-gray dusk.
They saw it and they knew.
The Phillies are going to the World Series for the first time in 13 years, and they are going there in a fashion that defies any and all words, Harper’s two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth inning propelling them to a 4-3 victory over the Padres in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series. As the final out soared toward Nick Castellanos in right field and the dugouts emptied and the adoptive anthem began to play, all you could do is wonder if any of them can possibly understand what they have just accomplished.
Surely, they will not realize the extent it until some future juncture. Isn’t that how it always goes? Permanence is a quality that requires time to appreciate. The moments accelerate into a blur until they carry you far enough away that you can look back and see how fleeting most everything was. You saw it throughout this remarkable stretch of five straight home playoff victories, each one of them beginning with a ceremonial first pitch and video montage featuring a member of the 2008 championship team. The organization’s attempt to marry the past with the present was not a simple marketing gimmick. It was a reminder to each of the 26 players who took the field that they did so with a chance to earn lifelong citizenship. They were playing for a reward far more precious than a trophy. They were playing to have done something that lasts.
That is what they did on Sunday afternoon. Whatever happens from this point forward, whether it ends in victory or defeat, in Houston or New York or right here in Philadelphia, the 2022 Phillies have cemented themselves as one of those teams, as a collection of those guys. They have secured the eighth World Series berth in franchise history. They have given themselves a chance at winning its third title. They have carved themselves a place outside of time.
It happened as it should have: with another brilliant pitching performance by a player who has waited an entire career to pitch on this stage, with a game-winning home run by a transcendant superstar who would have happily traded the MVP trophies for this kind of chance, with all of it set up by a pivotal third inning home run by a player who’d shouldered more of mediocrity’s weight than any member of the clubhouse.
If the eighth inning was Harper’s moment, the after-party belonged to Rhys Hoskins. In a city that regards winning as a personal quality, there are few lots less envious than that of the best player on a bad team. Worse still is to be the best player on a team that consistently falls short of expectations. Correlation may not equal causation, but it sure can look that way when a team’s best is not good enough.
This is particularly true in a sport where even the Hall of Famers fail more than half the time. For a player who is as imperfect as Hoskins, and who is imperfect in the way that Hoskins is, it could sometimes feel as if some sick karmic deity had dispatched him to Philadelphia with the singular charge of bearing a fan base’s frustration. The cold streaks at the plate, the stumbles in the field, the steadfast adherence to modern-day hitting’s true-outcomes approach, all of it made him a uniquely awkward fit for a city whose patience was close to zero at the time he arrived.
The combination could have been suffocating. Yet there he was in the third inning on Sunday afternoon, swinging 3-0 with a man on second and blasting a Yu Darvish cutter in the left-center seats to give the Phillies a 2-0 lead. It was Hoskins fifth home run of the postseason, fourth-most in franchise history, one behind Chase Utley and Lenny Dykstra, two behind Jayson Werth.
As it turns out, Werth was on hand watching it all go down, the fifth and final member of the 2008 team to bask in the permament afterglow he created for himself a decade-and-a-half ago. Shortly before first, Harper stood next to the former Phillies right fielder as the video board flashed replays of the two home runs he hit in Game 5 of the 2009 NLCS to help the Phillies clinch their second straight World Series appearance. Harper was a day shy of his 17th birthday when Werth’s two home runs in Game 5 of the NLCS helped the Phillies clinch their second World Series appearance in as many years. By the time Harper broke into the majors in 2012, Werth was a teammate, his Phillies career ending when the organization declined to match the seven-year, $126 million contract offer he’d received from the Nationals after the 2010 season.
Now, Harper took home plate, and Werth took the mound, and the two former teammates exchanged a bullet of a first pitch. The crowd roared. As you watched Harper watch Werth disappear into the dugout with his fist raised above his head, you wondered if he might one day have his own moment. Maybe that was the moment you knew.
