Bryce Harper flushes defensive misplay to flip wild-card series, help lead Phillies to Game 2 win over Braves: 'I wasn't not trying to hit a homer'

ATLANTA — Bryce Harper crouched in right field while the Phillies changed pitchers, hearing it from the Atlanta crowd. They've booed Harper for more than a decade, all the way back to when everyone was at Turner Field, but they'd never had so delicious a moment to rub in Harper's face as they did on Wednesday.

Harper had misplayed a Drake Baldwin fly ball, allowing it to skip off the top of his massive silver glove and dribble around the right-field warning track. Sean Murphy scored as Harper helplessly chased the ball, giving Atlanta a 2-1 seventh-inning lead in this win-or-go-home wild-card playoff game for the Phillies . Two batters later, a sac fly from Matt Olson made it 3-1 Braves and ended Cristopher Sánchez's day.

So as the infielders gathered on the mound, Harper gathered his thoughts. And his mind went to his 7-year-old son, Krew, and what he'd tell the boy in this situation.

"It's a learning situation for myself and everybody else as well," Harper said after the game. "You try to flush it as quick as possible."

Easy to say, difficult to do, especially when you've got an entire stadium glorying in your misfortune.

Whenever Harper walks to the plate in Atlanta, the Braves organist greets him with musical references to villains ranging from Darth Vader to the Wicked Witch of the West. To Atlanta fans, he's all that, plus Voldemort, Thanos and any other black hats you want to name. In 10 career postseason games against Atlanta, he has slashed .421/.500/.974, going 16-for-38 with three doubles, six homers and 12 RBI.

But you don't get to those mountaintops without going through a few valleys, and Harper was most definitely in one of those in the bottom of the seventh. Sánchez had pitched a spectacular game to that point, allowing just one run over 6-plus innings. The Phillies had reached the postseason by winning one all-or-nothing game on Sunday and were in the middle of another on Wednesday, and Harper had just about gift-wrapped Atlanta a ticket to the NLDS.

Those goat horns might have broken other players. But Harper has been here before, so many times. Phillies manager Don Mattingly said he didn't bother giving Harper any attaboys or you'll-get-'em-next-times — why would he? It's Bryce freaking Harper we're talking about.

"I never worry about Bryce," Mattingly said with a smile after the game. "He's been through so much in his life and his career. I never worry about him handling anything."

"I grew up playing a lot of big games," Harper said, "playing huge games that people are counting on you from the time you were 10 years old all the way 'til now. I don't think people understand what that feels like or looks like. When you guys were 10 years old, you probably weren't playing in front of 3,000 people, yelling and screaming at you, wondering why you're not the player you want to be." (That seems like a thread worth discussing further once Harper and the Phillies are finished with the season, but that's not the focus here.)

And then the 33-year-old superstar turned philosophical. "It's not that serious, to tell you the truth," he said. "I think people take it very seriously. And don't get me wrong: I take it serious. But I think there's a mindset, especially for kids nowadays — parents and coaches put so much on kids these days to have to come through and be great. But for me, it's 'How can you learn from each situation that you're in to come out great in the next one?'"

The "next one" turned out to be about 10 minutes later, when Harper stepped to the plate in the top of the eighth inning. Just three pitches after teammate Kyle Schwarber sent a Dylan Lee slider into the stands, Harper blasted a game-tying, momentum-grabbing, series-altering shot of his own , 418 feet into the right-center-field bleachers.

"I wasn't not trying to hit a homer, I can tell you that," he said with a smile postgame.

The game wasn't over; the Phillies still needed to shut down the Braves as the game went into extra innings. Thanks to another timely homer, a 10th-inning shot from Alec Bohm , and a gutsy pitching performance from rookie Andrew Painter , Philadelphia snatched a 4-3 win right out of the Braves' hands, setting up a decisive Game 3 on Thursday. Harper's defensive miscue certainly didn't help Philly, but the subsequent homer might just be the most important play of this series.

"I've been through a lot of situations to get to this point," he said. "You make a play like that, and I'm hearing it out there, obviously. But how quickly can I turn the page and just get past that moment, knowing that I'm still coming up?"

Braves manager Walt Weiss also knows a thing or two about dramatic, series-changing home runs. He was on the field in 1988, playing shortstop for the then-Oakland A's, when Kirk Gibson hobbled off the bench to homer for the eventual World Series-winning Los Angeles Dodgers . Now that's the kind of home run that leaves a scar.

"I've seen some great ones that this has happened to," Weiss said. "It comes with the territory when you're pitching late and close games."

Atlanta strode into this postseason; Philadelphia limped in. But they're tied at one win apiece now, with everything to play for on Thursday. They've both had their heroic moments, and they've both made run-causing mistakes. What happens Thursday will define their entire seasons. One team can draw strength from Harper's ability, and both can draw lessons from his resilience.

"Everybody's going to make mistakes at some point," he said, "but it's how you come through in the next situation."