PHILADELPHIA — The crowd, all 45,751 strong, was all in place a good 20 minutes before the first pitch, and they were loud. Phillies fans have earned a reputation these past two Octobers for being the team’s 10th man. They were showing off. So there was that.
Zack Wheeler was brilliant. He allowed one run in seven innings and 111 brilliant pitches, looking like he was picturing Brodie Van Wagenen’s car window with every 98-mph heater he unleashed. The Mets couldn’t touch him. So there was that, too.
And for the longest time Saturday afternoon, it looked like the third pitch that Kodai Senga threw, the one Kyle Schwarber clobbered 425 feet over the Toyota sign in right field, was going to stand up. There were a few umpire calls the Mets didn’t like after that, too.
So there was that.
And yet, somehow, the Mets didn’t seem terribly bothered by any of it. You looked in their dugout and it was the same loose bunch who’ve seemed to enjoy every bit of this Atlanta-to-Milwaukee-to-Atlanta-to-Milwaukee-to-Philadelphia road trip the past 12 days.
Turns out they were lying in wait.
Because suddenly, that is what they do. That is who they are. Wheeler came out of the game for the top of the eighth, and you could almost hear the Mets singing in the dugout. Then they came out and planted a five-spot on the Phillies, stunning them and all but silencing Citizens Bank Park.
By the time they scored the last of their runs an inning later, to further put away this 6-2 win in Game 1 of the National League Division Series, the locals had gone from restless to enraged, booing the home team with the same fervor they’d booed the Mets a few hours earlier.
The Mets wanted a split here, and they’ve guaranteed themselves at least that. When they return to CBP on Sunday afternoon, they should come with greed in their hearts. Every ounce of pressure will be on the Phillies. Maybe we’ve determined that the Mets play best with their backs against the wall, but it probably wouldn’t be so awful to play free and easy either.
It was a remarkable first postseason game between these ancient neighbors and recent rivals.
For years — in fact, for decades — it seemed that the Phillies and the Mets were going to pull off the impossible: exist less than two hours away from each other and yet never have a meaningful collision. They shared the same 10-team league from 1962-68, the same six-team division from 1969-93 and the same five-team division since 1994.
Everywhere else, New York and Philadelphia had become blood rivals, the proximity and the passion inevitably exploding onto the field, the court, the ice. Chuck Bednarik had nearly beheaded Frank Gifford one afternoon at Yankee Stadium in 1960, then shook a fist as he stood over Giff’s prone body; the Giants and Eagles have been like warring mob families ever since.
The Broad Street Bullies Flyers of the mid-’70s pulverized the aging GAG-line Rangers and eternal enmity was granted the likes of Bobby Clarke and Dave Schultz. The 76ers held off the emerging Knicks in the 1967 playoffs and steamrolled them in 1983 as part of Moses Malone’s 4-4-4 quest. And of course, Julius Erving went into the Hall of Fame as a Sixer because the Nets couldn’t afford him and chose not to shuttle him to the Knicks.
The Mets and the Phillies?
Benign indifference, mostly. When the Phillies have been good, the Mets have often been bad; reversed, when the Mets have been good the Phillies were mostly bad. Before 2007, the sum total of the rivalry was best expressed by this: The teams had only finished 1-2 in the standings twice. In 2006, the Mets had finished a dozen games ahead. In 1986, it was 21 ½.
But then, 2007 happened. And 2008 happened. And 2009 happened, when the worst nightmare of every Mets fan extant was realized, a Yankees-Phillies World Series that was six games and eight days of unrelenting torture.
But it’s taken a total of 63 seasons, six different ballparks and 1,081 games for the Mets and Phillies to finally meet in the postseason. Late Saturday afternoon, when Wheeler fired the first pitch of the NL Division Series to Francisco Lindor, we finally got that.
The streets bordering Citizens Bank Park were humming five hours before. The parking lots were filling. The buzz was palpable. Five months ago, the Knicks and 76ers played a wonderful six-game playoff series that brought all of the old New York/Philly energies and resentments to a boil, and Joel Embiid managed to do what was thought to be impossible:
He elbowed Chase Utley and Bednarik aside and announced himself as the most reviled Philly athlete of the moment, much of that due to their excellence, more of it due to their actions. Is there a Phillie among the present bunch ready to take a swing at that?
Finally, we get a chance to find out. And the Mets took the first cut.
