Bryce Harper stood in right field with his cap off and his hands on his knees, looking like a guy who’d just watched the season slip away.

He’d just misplayed Drake Baldwin’s fly ball, letting the go-ahead run score in the seventh inning of an elimination game. Matt Olson followed with a sacrifice fly, Truist Park erupted and the Phillies suddenly found themselves down 3-1 with six outs left.

It looked like the kind of ending their fans know all too well.

Then Kyle Schwarber launched a baseball about halfway to Chattanooga. Harper followed it with a homer of his own. It took them until the 10th to finish it off with an Alec Bohm bomb. Andrew Painter threw three scoreless innings of relief before recording the first game-ending automated ball-strike challenge in postseason history.

Baseball is ridiculous. It’s also perfect.

The Phillies beat Atlanta 4-3 in 10 innings on Wednesday, forcing a winner-take-all Game 3 and somehow bringing a season back from the dead in about 20 minutes.

Harper summed it up best:

What a sport.

Yeah, that pretty much says it all.

Philadelphia Kept Making This Harder Than It Needed To Be

The Phillies grabbed an early lead when Trea Turner doubled and Bryce Harper brought him home with a single in the first. Then they handed that lead right back.

Cristopher Sánchez walked Ronald Acuña Jr., who stole second, stole third, and scored on Matt Olson’s two-out single. One hit, and suddenly it was a 1-1 game.

That score held because Sánchez kept working his way out of trouble and Tyler Mahle quietly picked apart Philadelphia’s lineup. Mahle, who was actually pitching through an abdominal issue, gave up one run over seven innings in his first postseason start. Sánchez threw a career-high 116 pitches and lasted 6⅔ innings, which the Phillies badly needed because their bullpen's still something everyone would rather not think about.

His biggest escape came in the sixth. Atlanta loaded the bases with one out before Michael Harris bounced a ball to Alec Bohm at first. Bohm fired home, J.T. Realmuto completed the return throw and the Phillies somehow turned it into a beautiful 3-2-3 double play.

An inning later, Bohm wasn't quite as lucky.

With Sean Murphy on first and nobody out, Ha-Seong Kim dropped a bunt toward the mound. Bohm tried to get the lead runner at second instead of taking the easy out, and suddenly everyone was safe. Sánchez struck out Acuña, but Baldwin was able to lift a fly ball toward right.

Harper broke in at first, then drifted back and couldn’t recover. The ball clipped off his glove and brought Murphy home. Olson’s sacrifice fly made it 3-1.

And this wasn’t just some random defensive mistake. Harper had been moving back and forth between first base and right field all season long. That means he probably got half the reps at each that he would if he had just one position to worry about.

Now that whole positional shuffle looked like it might end the season.

Two Swings Changed Everything

Dylan Lee came in for Atlanta in the eighth and had made it through the entire regular season without giving up a home run to a left-handed hitter. Lefties were 0-for-92 against him when it came to taking him deep.

Schwarber needed six pitches to change that.

Lee threw a full-count slider, and Schwarber sent it 447 feet to right-center. Acuña didn’t even bother turning around. He didn’t need to. The ball was gone almost as soon as it left the bat.

Schwarber met Harper at the plate and told him to find a way to get on base. Harper had something else in mind.

Lee threw another slider on a 1-1 count, and Harper crushed it 418 feet to right. Again, the outfielders barely moved. In the span of two batters, a stadium that had been enjoying Harper’s misery went completely quiet.

The same player who looked ready to wear the loss had tied the game almost instantly.

I wasn’t not trying to hit a homer, I can tell you that.

The two swings were a reminder of why Philadelphia keeps betting on this core through every frustrating October ending. Schwarber hit 45 home runs during the regular season. Harper posted a team-best .865 OPS. They’re the two players most capable of changing a game in the blink of an eye.

Then The Rookie Had To Hold It Together

Closer Jhoan Duran wasn’t available after throwing two innings in Philadelphia’s 5-3 Game 1 loss, so Don Mattingly handed a tied elimination game to Andrew Painter.

The 23-year-old had never pitched in a true high-leverage relief spot. He’d never appeared in the postseason. And back in June, he was sent to Triple-A with a 7.06 ERA.

Then his first six pitches missed the strike zone.

Painter walked Austin Riley on four pitches, then opened Harris’ at-bat with two more balls. Realmuto went to the mound and kept it simple:

Just me and you.

Painter finally found the zone. Harris grounded the next pitch into a double play.

After that, Painter looked like the calmest person in the ballpark. He worked around a single in the ninth, came back for the 10th and kept attacking even after Atlanta put two runners on with two outs.

His last pitch was initially called a ball. Realmuto challenged it, but the automated system showed Painter’s 99 mph fastball clipping the zone. Three innings, three hits, three strikeouts, and no runs in a postseason debut nobody could’ve seen coming.

Realmuto called it a “career-altering performance.” He might be right.

Bohm Got The Last Swing

Before Painter could finish it, Bohm had to give him a lead.

With two outs in the 10th, Didier Fuentes tried to beat Bohm inside. Bohm didn’t barrel it and didn’t think it was gone. The ball just kept carrying, though, until it rattled against the fence behind the right-field wall.

It traveled just 357 feet. Schwarber’s went a whole 90 feet farther.

They counted exactly the same.

It was Bohm’s first opposite-field homer since Opening Day and made him just the fourth Phillie to hit a go-ahead home run in extra innings of a postseason game.

The Phillies still haven’t bought themselves more than one day. They’ve never won a postseason series after losing Game 1, and they’re only 1-3 in winner-take-all playoff games. Atlanta won 94 games, still has home field, and now gets another shot Thursday night.

But six outs from going home, the Phillies finally looked like themselves again.

All stats courtesy of MLB.com.

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