But Philadelphia is a better baseball town than Atlanta is. Better than your town too, wherever my zero readers might be, unless it’s also Philadelphia.
After the Braves were unceremoniously bounced from the go-zillionth NLDS, once again by the Phillies, I got to thinking. No, I’m hardly mad just disappointed whenever this happens, but the Braves will always be the Barves barring me having any more kids, which ain’t ever going to happen again, but I always think about why it is that the Braves just can’t stop transforming into the Barves, pretty much every single October throughout history, before by brain shuts down on baseball entirely until the following season.
I actually saw this outcome coming, because the way the Braves limped to the end of the season was pretty telling that they were in trouble once the playoffs began. Immediately after winning the division, the team entirely went on vacation and got clobbered by the Marlins, dropped 2/3 to the Phillies and then ended the season on an L to the Nationals. Max Fried and Charlie Morton went on the injured list, and it’s easy to say that the Braves were resting starters, but if you looked at the box scores, the starters were all playing starters’ innings for the bulk of the games after clinching.
I actually was a little optimistic when news came out that the Braves would be playing scrimmages against their minor leaguers during the Wild Card round, because it was evident that the first round layoff the Braves had last year dulled them once the Phillies came around, and they were proactive in trying to prevent that from happening again. And I was hoping that allowing fans to come watch, would’ve been like in Ted Lasso when AFC Richmond opened their practices to the fans, and they grew and increased, and it helped create a stronger bond between players and fans, which propelled them to later success.
But when the Braves got dropped by the Phillies in a glorified bullpen game in the first game of the NLDS, the sinking feeling in my gut returned, and I just knew that the Braves were going to lose in four games; and not just in four, I knew the sequence that the Braves would win game two, but then lose the two games once the series moved to Philadelphia, because it was the same script from the year prior. Once you’ve watched sports as much as I have, there are just patterns and feelings that make it easy to predict certain outcomes, and especially when it comes to the Braves, and their postseason success. But believe me, as much as I love being right about sports, this prediction coming true does not bring joy.
This year though, my brain took a different route, and stopped thinking about why the Braves suck in October, but more pondering on why the Phillies are so good once again, once the playoffs began. In fact, for those paying a modicum of attention throughout the season might’ve noticed, the Phillies were an outstanding team for the better part of the entire season, it’s just that the Braves were having a near-historically good season in their own right; but make no mistake, if not for the massive division lead that the Braves built in April and in June, the narrative of the season would’ve been way more interesting in September.
But it goes back to a storyline earlier in the season, where the Phillies’ shortstop Trea Turner was having a complete bomb of a season, and considering the fact that he had signed with the team to an 11-year deal worth $300 million, it looked like we were on the cusp of witnessing the newest edition to the endless list of bad contract free agent busts.
However, in a strange turn of events, there was a particular game where Phillies fans for one night, stopped acting like typical Phillies fans, and they did something collectively surprising and impressive; they cheered the fuck out of Trea Turner in the midst of his slump, and gave him a series of standing ovations every time he stepped to the plate.
And almost instantaneously, it’s almost like a switch flipped, and Trea Turner stopped sucking. He finished the remainder of the season hitting somewhere around .340 with a 1.000+ OPS. He stopped looking like a free agent who coasts through his first season of a big money deal so that he can hit the NOS later in the deal to up his next contract signing, and looked like he started the spray earlier than the script asked for it.
Plus, he reciprocated the love to Phillies fans, and took out some billboards across the city to thank them for their support, patience and love. We were witnessing a mutually beneficial emotional transaction going on here, in one of the hardest, if not the hardest sports towns in the country. Trea Turner was showing that he could, handle playing in Philadelphia.
It really got me thinking too, because as a baseball fan, most remember the saga of Bryce Harper’s free agency, and how sure, he signed for an absurd 13-year, $330M contract, but what a lot of people don’t realize that he actually turned down more money from the Washington Nationals, his former team.
You’d have to do some math to realize it, but basically the Nationals offered him a comparable deal that he got from the Phillies, but with a large chunk of it being deferred, which is what the Nationals do, but they basically told him that they wanted to give him a long-term retirement plan, where he’d made a ridiculous amount of money in annual installments with interest, after his playing days were over, which probably would have sailed past $330M when it was all said and done.
Most people realized though, that it really didn’t matter what the Nationals offered, because when the day was over, Bryce Harper simply wanted to play, in Philadelphia. He recognized the passionate fanbase, understood that if he sucked he would hear it, but if he prevailed, he would basically be god, or whatever his Mormon faith recognizes as the supreme deity. And he embraced the challenge, and from the second he had his press conference announcing his signing with the team, the love-fest began.
In all the years that I’ve followed baseball, I haven’t seen such a mutual desire of player and team and city coming together, since like, David Wells obviously wanting to be a Yankee. The Phillies have had some really good players throughout history, but I can’t recall ever seeing anyone bring so much fire to a team and city like Bryce Harper has. Even guys like Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins, who are Phillies legends in their own right, they never lit fires with the people, even after they won the World Series in 2008.
There was something Harper recognized within the city and its sports fans, and he clearly wanted to be a part of. And once he arrived, he really began cultivating a culture within the team, and sure, the first few years weren’t as successful at first, but as all systems develop, it sometimes takes time, and in the case of the Phillies, some additional parts and key acquisitions along the way.
After Harper, it seemed almost easy for the Phillies when they went out and brought in guys like JT Realmuto who was at the time, the one of the best catchers, who was leaving the Marlins. And then guys like Nick Castellanos, and then picking up Trea Turner. Zack Wheeler seemed to have found himself again pitching for the Phillies, and they had guys like Aaron Nola quietly having good careers all the while.
And the results are beginning to churn, and the Phillies have shown progress every year since the arrival of Harper. Aside from him, there is a culture with the team and their fans that really isn’t like any other fanbase out there. The players seem to have all bought in on the idea of playing not just for themselves, but for the entire city, and their fans clearly recognize it, and show up and represent for the team when it matters the most. If not for the fact that I generally loathe Philly sports, I would say that it’s a thing of beauty what the Phillies have with their fans, but I do envy it a little bit, because the Braves, no matter what time of the season it is, always act like the stuffy business entity that Braves Corporate actually is, and I feel like it’s a big part of why the team just cannot get over the hump in today’s environment.
The feeling I got from watching the Braves in this past playoffs is that they were playing to not lose, while the Phillies were playing to win. It was no more evident than the team’s willingness to go to the bullpen quickly, bring Craig Kimbrel out in the 7th and other outside-the-box of stuffy tradition that teams like the Braves have a hard time doing. I get this feeling of the 2008 Celtics with this Phillies squad, with how selfless and determined to win as a team they look, and if I’m a betting man, I think they cruise past the Diamondbacks in five, and it’s a lock that they make it to the World Series again.
While I’m making predictions, I’m going to go ahead and say that if it’s a Phillies vs. Astros rematch from last year, the Astros still take them, but god I hope not, if it’s the Phillies vs. Rangers in the World Series, I think we might be looking at the ultimate payoff to Bryce Harper’s mega-deal, and it sucks to be the Padres, Angels and whomever is going to give Juan Soto and Shohei Ohtani insane amounts of money very soon, because those guys aren’t going to be creating culture like Harper has.
