PHILADELPHIA — As Bryce Harper stepped to the plate in the eighth inning Sunday, a runner on base and the Phillies trailing by one run, Rhys Hoskins stood in the dugout and swayed, arms behind his back, occasionally bobbing up and down on his tiptoes, a 240-pound mass of nervous energy.
All around Citizens Bank Park, everyone did some variation of the same. The Phillies were one swing away from possibly winning the pennant, one strike from likely having to fly across the country for another game Monday night.
Talk about tension.
For a month, Harper has been impervious to tension. Pressure? Let somebody else worry about that. He has been the best hitter on the planet for the last three weeks, a man possessed with not allowing the Phillies to lose.
Was there any doubt he would deliver again?
So, Harper fouled off three consecutive pitches from San Diego Padres relief ace Robert Suarez. He laid off a two-strike changeup. And then he unloaded, bashing a 98.9 mph sinker into the left-field seats for a go-ahead two-run homer that led to a 4-3 victory and 45,485 fans losing their collective mind.
The Phillies are going to the World Series.
Really.
Go ahead and pinch yourself.
After winning 87 games in the regular season and claiming the sixth and final playoff berth in the National League, the Phillies swept the St. Louis Cardinals in the best-of-three wild-card round, blitzed the 101-win Atlanta Braves in the best-of-five divisional round, and ousted the upstart San Diego Padres, four games to one, in the best-of-seven NL Championship Series.
They did it through a steady rain that muddied the field in the late innings. They overcame three wild pitches in the seventh inning by reliever Seranthony Domînguez, who threw three wild pitches all season long. They leaned on ace Zack Wheeler and got another two-run homer from scorching-hot Hoskins. They asked starter Ranger Suárez to close out the game when David Robertson was unable to get the last two outs.
But when it mattered most, the Phillies turned to their $330 million man.
And he didn’t disappoint.
Harper never disappoints.
In 11 playoff games, Harper is batting .419 (18-for-43). He has five home runs and 11 RBIs. The homer that slayed the Padres was his 18th hit and 11th extra-base hit, both Phillies postseason records. He has a 10-game hitting streak, tied with Lenny Dykstra in 1993 for the club record.
For weeks, Harper has walked around the clubhouse before games and told teammates, “We ain’t losing tonight.” Then, he wills them to win. It’s uncanny. By now, it’s also entirely predictable.
“He lives for this,” said rookie shortstop Bryson Stott, who grew up around Harper in Las Vegas and has known him since he was a teenage phenom on the cover of Sports Illustrated. “Any time you have a superstar that has missed out on the postseason a few years in a row, they just want to get back and want to be on that big stage. He’s stepping up to the big stage for us, and to kind of follow his lead is huge.”
Everything lined up for a pennant-clinching party in South Philly. Wheeler took the mound on regular rest. Domínguez and José Alvarado were ready in the bullpen after not pitching in Game 4.
The weather even seemed to cooperate, with the rain lightening enough for an on-time start.
Wheeler dazzled, as usual and especially in this postseason. He uncorked the fastest pitch of his career, a 99.5 mph heater to Jurickson Profar in the first inning, and cracked 99 mph five times, including three consecutive pitches to Manny Machado.
But it was never going to be as easy as sending out the ace and hoping the Padres roll over. Besides, San Diego had its best pitcher on the mound, too, and Yu Darvish was up to the challenge of another duel with Wheeler.
It was a rematch of Game 1, when Wheeler blanked the Padres for seven innings and Darvish gave up little more than a pair of solo home runs to Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber. And for a while, Game 5 appeared to follow a similar script.
As Wheeler mowed down the first 10 Padres batters, Hoskins opened a lead in the third inning by jumping on a get-me-over 3-0 cutter from Darvish and rocketing it into the left-field seats for his third two-run homer in two games. It marked only the second time in his career that he homered on a 3-0 pitch. Rather than spiking his bat, as he unforgettably did after a homer in the divisional series against Atlanta, Hoskins helicoptered it as he screamed into the dugout.
But Darvish allowed only two more hits before being lifted in the seventh inning. The Phillies put only four more runners on base against him, none advancing beyond second. After the 10-run outburst in Game 4, the offense fell mostly silent.
The Padres tied it in the seventh inning on an RBI double by Josh Bell, then pushed across two runs on wild pitches. The planes were revving up for return trips to California.
But then Harper stepped to the plate.
And now the Phillies were making World Series plans.
By now, would anyone expect anything less?
