Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber channels Matt Stairs, makes MLB postseason homer
- Advertisement -
PHILADELPHIA — In theory, the National League Championship Series made 35 degrees of October warmth disappear Friday, just by shifting from San Diego to Philadelphia. Yes, sadly, it wasn’t 92 degrees anymore. But fortunately, baseball has a way of furnishing its own heat this time of year.
So we’d like to thank the Phillies’ pulsating 4-2 win over the Padres for furnishing the usual assortment of Weirdness, and also Wildness. But there’s only one place for this NLCS Game 3 edition of the Weird and Wild column to begin. With a throwback leadoff home run that was last seen …
1. Climbing a stairway to leadoff heaven
When they release the movie of the unlikely tale of the 2022 Phillies, I guarantee this scene won’t get dumped on the cutting-room floor.
It’s Game 3 of the 2022 NLCS, at raucous Citizens Bank Park. As beloved Phillies October hero Matt Stairs heads for the mound to toss the ceremonial first pitch, a blast from the NLCS past pops up on the massive video board in left field.
You should now watch what the occupants of Citizens Bank Park watched. C’mon, take a look. Unless you’re a Dodgers fan, or a distant relative of Jonathan Broxton, it’s still quite a sight.
Matt Stairs with a pinch hit monster HR for the #Phillies in the 2008 #NLCS against the #Dodgers ! pic.twitter.com/IzYSVXdmD6
— Baseball4Ever (@Baseball4Ever31) November 30, 2020
Stairs bashed that iconic home run in 2008, for a Phillies team of yesteryear that was starting to take on That Look. And now here he was, 14 years later, throwing out the first pitch before another NLCS game. But here’s where the cinematic Weird and Wild script kicks in.
Inspirational video appears on the board.
Stairs throws the first pitch to …
Who else but Kyle Schwarber, his 2022 Phillies doppelganger — another masher of memorable home runs, with the same No. 12 on his back.
Whereupon Schwarber does the most Stairsian thing ever — and begins the bottom of the first inning of the first NLCS game in Philadelphia in 12 years with … a house-rocking leadoff home run.
Seriously? Who writes these scripts?
“It’s just baseball being the weird, wacky, beautiful, lovely sport that we get to play,” said Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins, who is clearly aspiring to become the official baseball spokesman for this column. “Those moments seem to come up so often in this game. And as a team, we’ve put ourselves in a good position to succeed in those moments.”
Hoskins then glanced to his right in the postgame clubhouse, where Schwarber was entertaining a media entourage of his own, and grinned.
“I’m not going to put any pressure on him,” Hoskins said of his friend, Kyle Schwarber, leadoff home run machine. “But I hope there’s another one tomorrow.”
Ha. For the record, nobody has ever hit leadoff home runs in back-to-back postseason games in any series ever played. But you shouldn’t put it past Schwarber. And why is that? Oh, maybe because he’s merely the…
Read More: Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber channels Matt Stairs, makes MLB postseason homer 2022-10-22 20:09:24