HOUSTON — The nation rejoices this morning, because, these days, Jason Kelce is dead wrong.
Everyone likes us. And yes, we care.
The Fightin’ Phillies added another chapter to their fairy-tale season. They spotted the Astros a five-run lead through the first three innings, but, thanks to another episode of brilliant manipulation by rookie manager Rob Thomson and utter indifference to logic and expectation, roared all the way back for a 6-5 win Friday night.
An Okie struck the death blow.
With the guile and perseverance that marks this as the most thrilling season in franchise history, the team that fired its manager on June 3, the team that needed 160 games to back into the postseason with the first No. 6 seed in baseball history, won Game 1 of a World Series they have no business being in. They won against the best team in baseball over the past six seasons, and they won it in that team’s cartoonish home stadium.
They won when J.T. Realmuto, the Oklahoman, made his Red River home folks prouder than ever, with a two-run double off Astros starter Justin Verlander to tie it in the fifth and a slicing, carrying, 3-2 solo homer off Luis Garcia to lead off the top of the 10th inning.
Leave it to the backstops.
Thomson was a catcher in his playing days. Realmuto’s the best catcher in baseball. Kelce surely would be a catcher if he didn’t play football.
This win, this night, was a wholesome elixir for a dying pastime. The Phillies have stolen home field advantage for the fourth straight time this postseason, and, in Philly, that’s a helluva thing.
Thanks in part to the underdog run the Eagles went on in 2017, and thanks in part to the arrogant misdeeds of the Astros in the past, America is a nation whose World Series sympathies are directed on one franchise, and one franchise only. An extremely unscientific study — 100,000 geotagged tweets tracked by an online betting site — showed that only six of 50 states favored the Astros, who are in the Series for the fourth time in the last six seasons. They won in 2017, but, to the delight of citizens who dislike cheaters, they lost in 2019 and 2021.
The Phillies, with their rascal of a mascot, an equally motley and hairy roster, and their team anthem, remarkably, co-written by gay icon Robyn, are the darlings of baseball. The Astros, meanwhile, are the villains. They’re the Patriots of Major League Baseball: A well-built, well-run, talented team that cheated to win.
It’s true that Realmuto’s home state prefers the Astros, but it’s been a long time since he won state titles in baseball and football at Carl Albert High in Midwest City, and the Astros have been superb for half a decade. The Phillies and Marlins? Not so much.
But Realmuto is part of a mercenary crop that Phillies owner John Middleton has been assembling for four years. Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Nick Castellanos, and Game 2 starter Zack Wheeler joined Rhys Hoskins and Game 1 starter Aaron Nola to create an outlay of almost $800 million and a $245 million payroll in 2022 that exceeded the luxury tax for the first time in franchise history.
A wise investment.
Because, now, they’re three wins from their third World Series title in their 140-year history.
Like so many of the Phillies’ big wins this season, it was un-pretty. They needed three big defensive plays from third baseman Alec Bohm and one from right fielder Castellanos, neither of whom was expected to play defense much, if at all, this season.
Nola was 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA in two career starts against the Astros, with 19 strikeouts and one walk entering the game. He’d dealt 62/3 scoreless innings Oct. 3 in Houston, when the Phillies clinched their wild-card berth. But he gave up five runs in 41/3 innings Friday night. The hitters awakened with three runs in the fourth, and went double-walk-double to tie it at 5 in the top of the fifth.
Then, Thomson fired a big bullet in the fifth.
He used lights-out lefty Jose Alvarado, who’d been a late-innings assassin for the past four months. Nola began the inning with 76 pitches, having given up five runs, and was allowed to face right-handed hitter Jeremy Pena. But there was no way Thomson was going to let him tackle lefthanded-hitting AL MVP candidate Yordan Alvarez.
It probably would’ve been Connor Brogdon if the Phillies had still trailed, 5-3, but when Brandon Marsh and Kyle Schwarber went double-walk to start the fifth, then had Realmuto drive them in with another double, the game became a study in micromanagement. Thomson needed 14 outs at that point. It was 17 outs, ultimately.
Alvarado hadn’t been used as early as the fifth inning since May 30. Nevertheless, he retired Alvarez and righthanded hitter Alex Bregman to end the fifth, got lefthander Kyle Tucker — who’d homered twice — to start the sixth, and was done. Zach Eflin finished the sixth, got the first two of the seventh, then left for presumed Game 3 starter Ranger Suarez, a lefty, because Alvarez was back in the box. Suarez is a former reliever who closed out Game 5 of the NLCS, and he closed out Alvarez, too, with an evil, 3-2 cutter on the low inside black that Alvarez swung over.
Seranthony Dominguez took the ninth. Former closer David Robertson finished it in the 10th.
That left J.T. Realmuto as the hero of the day.
And Rob Thomson as the super genius.
