LONDON — They wedged a baseball field into a Premier League soccer stadium. Mascots of Freddie Mercury and Winston Churchill ran along the warning track. Fans stood and sang “God Save the King” before the game.
But the main attraction, as ever, was Bryce Harper.
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What, you expected someone else?
Fly the Phillies to a different continent, 3,600 miles from home, to play amid impressionable fans with foreign accents. It doesn’t matter. “The Showman,” as Harper’s teammates call him, loves a grand stage, and for a sport that’s hoping to extend its reach into Europe, this might as well have been Shakespeare’s Globe.
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There was Harper, then, with the Phanatic in a Grenadier Guard’s bushy hat painted on the barrel of his bat and the Spice Girls’ catalog as his walk-up music, crushing a game-tying solo homer to right field to fuel a six-run fourth inning in a 7-2 knee-slapper over the Mets.
And there was Harper, sliding on his knees — an homage to the footballers who usually tread the turf at London Stadium — in front of waiting manager Rob Thomson in the dugout.
It was theatrical. It was a spectacle. It was Harper being Harper, banging and mashing in the land of bangers and mash, making a proper introduction to Britain.
“How long have you been planning that, buddy?” Nick Castellanos recalled saying, as the Phillies’ dugout erupted in laughter (and a few exhaled breaths that Harper didn’t catch a cleat in the spongy turf).
The answer: A few hours. Harper thought out everything else — from his selection of walk-up tunes (”I think I picked some good ones,” he laughed) to the custom designs on his bat and footwear. But before the game, he got to talking with a few trainers.
“I said, ‘Hey, if I go deep, I’m going to do the soccer celebration,’” Harper said after the Phillies hiked their best-in-the-majors record to 45-19. “I didn’t tell any of my teammates because I wanted them to be surprised. I love the moment, love the opportunity, and was able to do it.”
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The whole thing is preposterous. A day earlier, as Harper waxed poetic about why he loves baseball, he mentioned how difficult it is to hit major-league pitching. Yet he does it on the regular, almost at will, and especially when, say, there’s a pennant to win, or a national television audience.
Or, in this case, a country of curious, potentially new baseball fans.
“He’s done it so often that you do just sort of think that this is his time,” Thomson said. “It doesn’t always happen, but a lot. It’s amazing.”
The Phillies thumped the Mets by doing what they do. They got 5⅔ solid innings from Ranger Suárez, now 10-1 with a 1.81 ERA. Orion Kerkering blew 100 mph heaters and broke off 88 mph breaking pitches to strike out Mets star Francisco Lindor and snuff out a sixth-inning threat.
And they pounced on a mistake and got a big hit from a depth player in the inning that changed the game.
After Mets right fielder Starling Marte let Edmundo Sosa’s lazy two-out fly ball fall in front of him for a go-ahead RBI single (.140 expected batting average, according to Statcast), struggling utilityman Whit Merrifield blasted a three-run homer to open a 5-1 lead.
“It felt good to drive some runs in,” said Merrifield, who actually raised his average and OPS to .174 and .544. “I felt like I left the whole Premier League on base the past couple months.”
Said Thomson: “I sort of saw the blood come back into his face after he hit the home run. He relaxed a little bit.”
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But the show belonged to “The Showman.” It wasn’t only the homer. Or the Spice Girls. Or even the slide. On the 15-year anniversary of his appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated — as a 16-year-old — Harper reinforced on these shores and back home why he’s the biggest star in baseball, if not its best player.
Harper doubled in the first inning against Mets lefty Sean Manaea. After his homer in the fourth, he singled in the fifth. At one point, he was mic’d up for the Fox telecast.
The slide: “It was iconic,” said Suárez, a soccer fanatic. “In our game, we don’t see those kinds of celebrations. I liked it a lot.”
Harper did it all. Well, almost. He got caught stealing second and was asked about the imperfection by a local journalist.
So, maybe the Brits are already catching on to how good Harper is.
“He’s a superstar,” Thomson said. “People come to watch him perform, and he understands that. And he’s a perfectionist. I think Bryce feels like every time he goes to the plate he should get a base hit, and if he doesn’t, it upsets him. That’s what makes him great.
“There’s a lot of eyes on him and he performed. Not many people can say that. He’s incredible. He really is.”
Predictable, too, if you ask some of his teammates.
“He’s a showman,” said Castellanos, who blistered a 113.1 mph homer in the eighth inning, just for good measure. “It doesn’t surprise me. Give the European fans something.”
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That, after all, is the idea. This marks MLB’s third series in London and second in as many years after the Yankees and Red Sox made the inaugural appearance in 2019.
The London Series brought out the dignitaries, from commissioner Rob Manfred to players’ union chief Tony Clark. It also sparked a mini-reunion for the 2008 Phillies, with Jimmy Rollins, Ryan Howard, Shane Victorino, Carlos Ruiz, Cole Hamels, Ryan Madson, and Matt Stairs joining Londoner Chase Utley.
“This is a great opportunity for Major League Baseball and us, the Phillies and the Mets, to get this experience, but also for the game itself,” Kyle Schwarber said. “Hopefully, 20 years down the road, there’s going to be a kid that was sitting in the stands that’s in the big leagues.”
Surely, that kid would remember the impression that Harper made.
“Being able to put on a good show let them know the emotion of baseball,” Harper said. “Philadelphia and the fans of Philadelphia rival a football stadium, the way it kind of electrifies you and the way you play. It’s just so much fun to be able to come over the pond and do this.
“Any time you can put people on their feet and put joy in people, that’s what it’s all about. Being able to do that today was a lot of fun. I thought we all had a really good time out there.”
