2022 MLB Playoffs: Phillies win pennant by overcoming injury, rallying together

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

PHILADELPHIA — The Philadelphia Phillies, winners of the 2022 National League pennant, could not have done this without Bryce Harper.

But, they say, they also would not have done it had Harper not broken his thumb this summer. When the injury felled Harper on June 25 in San Diego, the Phillies were a third-place, 37-35 team. Over the two months he missed, they were forced to find more within themselves or fold for the season.

"That’s where we really jelled," catcher J.T. Realmuto said. "We all had to come together and figure out different ways to win. We just did a lot of fun stuff together, to try to bring the team together. And then we started playing better games."

They leaned on new interim manager Rob Thomson’s leadership. They formed a Philadelphia day care for the team’s many rookies. They scheduled more team dinners during road trips. And they performed karaoke.

On Sunday evening in South Philadelphia, the Phillies reveled in the fruit of all their labor — even the karaoke practice. The rest of the roster inched itself within reach of the World Series, and with one swing that will forever be remembered here, Harper carried them the last 382 feet. After they finished off the Padres 4-3 in Game 5 of the NLCS at Citizens Bank Park, the Phillies sang their hearts out inside an aggressively raucous clubhouse.

This sport’s recent powerhouses — the Astros and the Dodgers, the Braves and the Yankees — have cultivated more adult sensibilities within their clubhouses. These Phillies are happily collegial, even childlike.

They’re not exactly underdogs. With a $229 million Opening Day payroll, how could they be? But they also didn’t enter this season as divisional favorites, let alone consensus World Series contenders. Harper’s injury, especially, imbued them with a long-lasting sense that the industry had counted them out.

"We knew we’d play our best baseball in the postseason when our backs were against the wall," said reliever Zach Eflin, one of the longest-tenured Phillies. "Nobody expected us to be in this situation, but we all did."

At no moment, Eflin insisted, did the Phillies cease to believe they would win the World Series.

There would've been plenty of plausible moments. At June’s start, the Phillies fired manager Joe Girardi and replaced him with Thomson, the then-nameless bench coach.

"You think about where we were on June 2 and 3," Phillies principal owner John Middleton said Sunday night. "Did you really think we were gonna be here?"

Before June’s end, they lost Harper, potentially for the season.

"When he went down, we were all deer in the headlights," general manager Sam Fuld said. "We were worried about how we were going to piece things together without him. You lose an MVP like that, you’re facing a giant challenge, especially given our record at the time."

Even Harper has admitted that he had doubts about his chances of returning this season and the team’s ability to withstand his absence.

But one month in, the Phillies started winning. They took two of three from the Braves. They won seven straight, all within the NL East. By the time Harper returned, they were 15 games over .500. Now, they are still playing like they must survive without their superstar, and they still have their superstar.

"Losing Bryce was absolutely devastating," said Garrett Stubbs, the backup catcher and clubhouse DJ. "But those moments are where you find out what the team is actually going to be able to do throughout a year. The fact that we could go out without arguably the best player in the league and win baseball games, when he came back, we just had all the confidence in the world."

"Then we started thinking about how good we could be once he returned," Fuld said. "We knew, once he came back, that we really would be a force to be reckoned with."

All month, the Phillies have demonstrated that force. First, they clinched their postseason spot in Houston, where they’re likely to begin the World Series on Friday. Then they dispatched the Cardinals and Braves. In the NLCS, they met a similarly hot San Diego squad. The Phillies required only five games to end the Padres’ season. 

These Phillies will go all of October without facing elimination.

Their games have not lacked drama. On Sunday, scheduled precipitation added more. Precisely one hour before the 2:37 p.m. ET first pitch, Phillies employees began to pull the tarp from the field to cheers from the crowd. The rain started soon after. For hours, it flirted with unplayable levels.

During a break, Rhys Hoskins seized on a hanging slider from Yu Darvish. For the third time in 20 hours, Hoskins homered in Kyle Schwarber, who worked a two-out walk ahead of him.

As he had Saturday, Juan Soto responded with his own home run, snapping Zack Wheeler's perfect-game bid in the fourth. The Padres tied it in the seventh, when Jake Cronenworth slapped a single up the middle and Josh Bell doubled him in. 

Between those hits, Thomson swapped pitchers, replacing Wheeler with right-hander Seranthony Domínguez. As rain poured down on South Philadelphia, Domínguez attempted to keep the tie intact. Firing slick baseballs, he so misfired on two occasions that José Azocar, who pinch-ran for Bell, took a base each time. That’s how the Padres scored the go-ahead run.

The conditions were suboptimal. In the middle of the seventh and eighth innings, Phillies groundskeepers poured sack after sack of dirt across the infield. That helped some, but the rain continued. A puddle formed down the third-base line, not far from home plate.

Soon, Harper, the NLCS MVP, jogged past it as he vaulted Philadelphia into the lead. Phillies fans formed a flowing sea of red as they celebrated his two-run homer. 

An hour later, the Phillies created a puddle of booze in the center of their clubhouse. Pitchers took turns jumping into it, gauging their splash radius.

By then, Realmuto had retrieved the cigars he stashed for the occasion in his locker. He brought out two bags from Holt’s Cigar Company, a local institution, and began distributing cigars and lighters. Rookie Bryson Stott removed the Budweiser box he had been wearing as a hat to puff one.

Like many Phillies, Realmuto is playing in his first postseason. But he is 31, old enough to know that this magical run won’t last forever. At some point, exhaustion will set in. 

The Phillies’ plan is to delay that about 12 more days.

"Right now," Realmuto said, "we’re just riding that high."

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the Dodgers for The Athletic, the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and L.A. Times, and his alma mater, USC, for ESPN Los Angeles. He is the author of "How to Beat a Broken Game." Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.