Bryce Harper Fixes Defensive Mistakes to Reverse Wild Card Series and Help Phillies Win Game 2 Against Braves: ‘I Wasn’t Trying to Hit a Homer’
ATLANTA — Bryce Harper crouched in right field as the Phillies changed pitchers, hearing him from the Atlanta crowd. They’ve booed Harper for more than a decade, dating back to the days when everyone was at Turner Field, but they’d never had a more delicious moment to rub Harper’s face in than on Wednesday.
Harper had misplayed a Drake Baldwin ball, allowing him to leap off the top of his huge silver glove and dribble around the right-field warning track. Sean Murphy scored as Harper helplessly chased the ball, giving Atlanta a 2-1 lead in the seventh inning in this winner-take-all wild card playoff game for the Phillies. Two batters later, a Matt Olson sac fly made the score 3-1 for the Braves and ended Cristopher Sánchez’s day.
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As the infielders gathered on the mound, Harper collected his thoughts. And his mind turned to his 7-year-old son, Krew, and what he would say to him in this situation.
“It’s a learning situation for me and for everyone,” Harper said after the game. “Try to empty it as quickly as possible.”
Easy to say, difficult to do, especially when you have an entire stadium glorying in its misfortune.
Every time Harper shows up in Atlanta, the Braves organist greets him with musical references to villains ranging from Darth Vader to the Wicked Witch of the West. For Atlanta fans, he’s all of that, plus Voldemort, Thanos, and every other black hat you want to name. In 10 career playoff games against Atlanta, he slashed .421/.500/.974, going 16-for-38 with three doubles, six homers and 12 RBIs.
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But you don’t get to the top of these mountains without crossing a few valleys, and Harper was most certainly in one of them at the bottom of the seventh. Sánchez had pitched a spectacular game up to that point, allowing just one run in 6+ innings. The Phillies had reached the playoffs by winning an all-or-nothing game on Sunday and were in the middle of another on Wednesday, and Harper had almost bagged a ticket to Atlanta for the NLDS.
Those goat horns could have broken other players. But Harper has been here many times before. Phillies manager Don Mattingly said he didn’t bother giving Harper attaboys or you’ll get them next time — why would he? This is Bryce, fucking Harper, we’re talking about.
“I never worry about Bryce,” Mattingly said with a smile after the game. “He’s been through so much in his life and in his career. I never worry about him handling anything.”
“I grew up playing a lot of big games,” Harper said, “playing huge games that people are counting on you from the age of 10 until now. I don’t think people understand what that looks like or what that feels like. When you were 10 years old, you probably weren’t playing in front of 3,000 people, yelling at each other and wondering why you’re not the player you want to be.” (This seems like a worthy thread). to be discussed more once Harper and the Phillies finish the season, but that’s not the goal here.)
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And then the 33-year-old superstar became philosophical. “It’s not that bad, actually,” he said. “I think people take it very seriously. And don’t get me wrong: I take it seriously. But I think there’s a mindset, especially for kids these days: Parents and coaches are putting so much on kids these days to have to come out of it and be great. But for me, it’s ‘How can you learn from each situation you’re in to come out great in the next one?'”
The “next” happened about 10 minutes later, when Harper came to the plate in the top of the eighth inning. Just three pitches after teammate Kyle Schwarber sent a Dylan Lee slider into the stands, Harper fired his own tying shot, seizing momentum and changing the series, 418 feet into the right-center bleachers.
“I wasn’t not try to hit a home run, I can tell you that,” he said with a smile after the game.
The game was not over; the Phillies still had to stop the Braves as the game went into extra innings. Thanks to another timely homer, a 10th-inning shot from Alec Bohm and a gutsy pitching performance from rookie Andrew Painter, Philadelphia snatched a 4-3 victory from the Braves, setting up a decisive Game 3 on Thursday. Harper’s defensive mistake certainly didn’t help Philly, but the ensuing home run might just be the most important play of this series.
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“I went through a lot of situations to get to this point,” he said. “You do a piece like that, and I hear it there, obviously. But how quickly can I turn the page and move past this moment, knowing that I’m still on the rise?”
Braves manager Walt Weiss also knows a thing or two about series-changing dramatic home runs. He was on the field in 1988, playing shortstop for the Oakland A’s, when Kirk Gibson limped off the bench to homer for the World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers. This is the kind of home run that leaves a scar.
“I’ve seen some really good ones that this has happened to,” Weiss said. “That comes with the territory when you throw games late and close.”
Atlanta entered these playoffs; Philadelphia limped in. But they are now tied with one win apiece, with everything to play for on Thursday. They both had heroic moments and both made mistakes that caused the race. What happens on Thursday will define their entire seasons. A team can draw strength from Harper’s abilities, and both teams can learn from his resilience.
“Everyone is going to make mistakes at some point,” he said, “but that’s how you get through the next situation.”
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