NLCS: Bryce Harper Leads Phillies to World Series

“I knew if I hit the ball into the gap or anything, J.T. was going to score,” he said. “So I wasn’t trying to do too much in that situation at all. I took my chances early in the at-bat and kind of was like, ‘OK, here we go. What do I need to do to either just get him over or get this job done?’”

Upstairs in the suite where the Phillies were housing their alumni for the night, one of the stars of their 2008 World Series title run couldn’t believe what he was seeing, even before Harper stepped in. Having noticed the flamethrowing left-hander Josh Hader warming up in San Diego’s bullpen, Jayson Werth couldn’t believe Hader was not being summoned to face the left-handed-hitting Harper.

“I looked at my wife, Julie, and said, ‘This game is over’,” Werth said.

Ryan Howard, the retired slugger, and Charlie Manuel, the popular manager of that last, legendary Phillies team, were in the suite with Werth. And as the Phillies came back and the rain fell and the wind swept, some special memories came flooding back as the special new memories were being authored.

At one point, Werth said he walked over to Manuel and Howard, recalling the rainy and cold conditions when the Phillies beat Tampa Bay in the 2008 World Series and asked, “Are you guys getting, like, déjà vu? Water’s behind second base, there’s a puddle behind first base. It wasn’t even one-tenth what it was in ’08 but it started. Do you remember how much water was on the field at one point?”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/23/sports/baseball/bryce-harper-phillies-world-series.html