Mortgage rates may be pushing 8% and inventory may be all time lows, but the Phillies are the proud owners of some of the most prized real estate in the state of Georgia: the inside of the Braves’ heads.
Somebody call the Cobb County Sheriff, because Bryce Harper sure as heck ain’t leaving on his own. He spent his Saturday night with his feet kicked up on a leather recliner in the middle of the home team’s gray matter. Rocks glass in one hand. Cigar in the other.
Harper wasn’t responsible for all of the psychological damage that the Phillies inflicted in their 3-0 win in Game 1 of the National League Division Series. But make no mistake. He is the reason they suddenly are two games away from their second straight National League Championship Series.
This was a cringe-level meltdown, and Harper had greasy beard fingers in the middle of just about all of it. He is a maniac. The best kind. You saw it in the wild-man gaze on his face as he charged around third base and slid headfirst into home on a single in the fourth inning. You saw it in the five-karat gleam in his eye as he circled the bases after giving the Phillies a 2-0 lead with a solo home run in the sixth inning. You saw it as he stood on third base with two out in the eighth inning and watched the empty beer bottles rain down onto the outfield grass as the Neanderthals in the Truist Park stands protested a catcher’s interference call.
It’s a shame Harper operates with such a high level of professional decorum. It would have been great to see him run out to the outfield, grab one of the empties, and raise up a toast to a city that hasn’t seen this level of destruction since the end of the antebellum years.
Harper was Harper. That’s the simplest way to put it. He was the player he has been since he first donned a Phillies uniform. He was the player he was throughout last year’s postseason, the one who emerged early in the Braves four-game loss to the eventual NLCS champs. When he wasn’t tagging Spencer Strider for the hardest home run the Braves righty had ever allowed, Harper was either on base or waiting for his next opportunity to get himself there. He reached four times: two walks, a single, and that loud sixth-inning home run to right field.
He didn’t do it alone. The pitching was great. Manager Rob Thomson somehow patched together a shutout after pulling his electric starter with just 53 pitches in the fourth inning. The fielding was impeccable, particularly Trea Turner’s remarkable diving stop of a double pay ball in the bottom of the eighth.
But it all came back to Harper. It always does, doesn’t it? At 30 years old, after more than a decade of playing his sport at the highest level, he continues to do all of the things that a championship team needs out of its central figure.
The Phillies are once again in the driver’s seat, one win closer to the day when they deliver Harper to the thing he both desperately wants and unquestionably deserves.
A World Series ring.
