BIGGER THAN ROCKY, HARPER FORGES A BROMANCE WITH PHILA-HELL-PHIA

He identified traits in a hard-crusted town that most athletes do not — intensity and accountability — and his vision was validated by a storybook home run that continues his ascent to Cooperstown

     He wanted to dance with Sports Satan. He demanded the bad and the ugly, believing he would unearth the good. He asked for the hate, the civic illness, the snakepit that threw snowballs at Santa Claus and hurled a beer bottle at a former league MVP (Ryan Howard) and cheered when an enemy receiver (Michael Irvin) was carted away with a career-ending spine injury.

     Bring on the browbeating sports-talk shows that outrate news and music stations. Let masochism challenge his machismo. Unlike so many athletes who fear Phila-HELL-phia, and so many who succumb to its perpetually prickly nature, Bryce Harper embraced the gauntlet so he could shout to the world after he found heaven above the crust and head-aimed “D” batteries.

     And there it was, his moment of connection somewhere in the rain, on an October weekend a few days after his 30th birthday. As he walked to the on-deck circle, working late on a Sunday in a working-class town, Harper told hitting coach Kevin Long, “Let’s give them something to remember tonight.” Not that he hadn’t already. Just the day before, he stood on second base during a rout of San Diego that placed the Phillies within a victory of the National League pennant. Beard full, eyeblack streaked across his face, he ran his hands across the “Phillies” logo on his chest. Then he looked into the stands, at the fans who’d been ready to loathe him when he signed a 13-year, $330 million contract three years ago. All he saw were red-garbed people standing, dancing, roaring, crying.

     “This is my f—ing house!” he shouted.

     So why not make one more memory, a bigger memory? Down 3-2 in the eighth inning and facing Robert Suarez, a gas-slinging relief pitcher who hadn’t allowed a home run since May, Harper swung his thunder bat and transformed Philadelphia into the City of Brotherly Love, as William Penn intended it centuries ago. His opposite-field homer landed in the left field seats, lifted the Phillies to their first World Series in 13 years and rewarded his faith in the place where he’ll raise his kids and, presumably, eat free cheesesteaks the rest of his days. Deep in his soul, though he grew up in Las Vegas and played seven seasons down I-95 in Washington, he knew his passion and accountability would mesh with the hard-core identity of his new home. His belief has been validated, with a bond that secures an inevitable ascent toward Cooperstown.

     “I feel I’m hand in hand with them,” Harper said. “When you want to be in a city, when you want to be a factor in a city, that’s all they want to see. They just want you to play hard. That’s it. No excuses, good or bad, they don’t care. They just want you to keep doing it. I love that mind-set. My dad used to say the same thing when I was growing up: ‘It don’t matter. Next day, next day, next day, keep going, keep going.’ And that’s how the city is.”

     Amazing, isn’t it, that he could detect a future kinship while playing for a heated division rival for so long? “Unless you’re wearing Phillie red or you’re a Phillie, they don’t like you — and I love that,” Harper said. “I love every emotion that they have. I did as an opposing player for a long time, and I wanted that. I wanted that emotion from the fans. They just want you to work hard. They want you to be who you are, no excuses.”

     The churlish behavior of the fans — and to be fair, not all are wacko — generally puts Philly atop the list of cities that don’t deserve sports glory. But as the people celebrate a convergence of prosperity this fall, in baseball and football, I’ll admit to a forced smile. When they invest so much energy in their teams, deriving so much esteem from what happens in games inside three venues in South Philly, yeah, they deserve it when the Phillies reach the World Series in the same timeframe when the Eagles are the NFL’s only remaining perfect team at 6-0. In Chicago, another large metropolis driven by a generational dependence on sports for civic pride, fans are abused by owners who don’t win titles for ungodly stretches: the Cubs have won one World Series since 1908; the White Sox have won one Series since throwing one in 1919; and the Bears, an NFL charter franchise, have won only one of the 56 Super Bowls played since 1967.

     But unlike Chicago fans, who tend to sit back and accept mistreatment, Philly fans are cutthroat in their impatience. They screamed until the Eagles broke a long drought and won the Super Bowl in 2018 — with a play known as the “Philly Special,” no less. They howled until the Phillies broke through in 2008. They remain aghast that the Flyers haven’t won a Stanley Cup in almost a half-century. They’re still outraged about the 76ers, who haven’t won an NBA championship since 1983 and have started 0-3 amid early calls that coach Doc Rivers be sacked for Villanova legend Jay Wright.

     This is why Harper’s love-in with the city is of paramount importance. He could have signed almost anywhere in free agency, headed west to Los Angeles or San Francisco, or stayed in D.C. But the Phillies weighed in with the best and longest offer. He saw the snakepit as a place to start a family with his wife, Kayla. Really? Bryce Harper in Philadelphia? Wouldn’t they devour him? Wouldn’t they pierce the smugness of the guy who once told a reporter, “That’s a clown question, bro,” and posed naked on the cover of ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue?

     No, he melted them. He mesmerized them. Are they still standing and chanting his name in Citizens Bank Park? Not since 2013 had a postseason batter, with his team trailing in the eighth inning of a potential series clincher, delivered the eventual winning home run. What more possibly is coming in the Series from the natural who finally is blossoming in the month of October, after winning two league MVPs and meeting the expectations accompanying his No. 1 selection in the 2010 draft? His OPS, 1.351, already is the fifth-highest in a single postseason.

     “This is the dream. This city, this team — I’m so happy for all of them,” Harper said in his Phillies headband. “Yeah, we all think in our backyards, ‘This is the World Series, right? Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, 3-2 count.’ But in the World Series, that’s when you dream about it, you dream about the next stop. I’m looking forward to that next one. This is great to be the last National League team standing. The Philadelphia Phillies, we’re here. But we’re ready to go in that next round. We’ve got four more to go.”

    His teammates were as gobsmacked as the fans by his dramatic clout. But no one was surprised. “That's the reason we signed him, the city loves him, and you can't say enough about the guy," said ace Zack Wheeler, who is lined up Friday to start Game 1 in Houston. "He just has the thing in him. He just has that in him where he steps up in big moments. I don't know, he's always been a dude. It was always fun to compete against him, but it's a lot more fun when he's on your team.”

     “He’s proved to me over and over and over again that there’s no moment that’s too big for him,” said Rob Thomson, who reaches the Fall Classic in his first season as a big-league manager after replacing Joe Girardi in early June. “He’s come through so many times. You just kind of expect it when he goes to the plate.”

     It took awhile for Harper to bury a decade of also-random in his new digs, as the Nationals were winning a championship the season after he departed. But now that he’s in his first World Series, Harper has become the ringleader of a non-stop Philly kegger. It reminds you of high school, the way athletes from different teams support each other. Eagles center Jason Kelce, just behind Harper among those most synonymous with the city, didn’t just show up for Game 3. He walked onto the field between innings and chugged a beer. He waved a rally towel. He hugged the Phillie Phanatic, that annoying but somehow beloved mascot.

     Eagles coach Nick Sirianni, long since forgiven for a shaky performance at his introductory news conference, wears a Phillies hoodie to his media sessions. Sixers superstar Joel Embiid, all 7 feet and 285 pounds of him, threw a football on the Eagles sideline at Lincoln Financial Field. This symbiosis is nothing to chuckle about. With the teams winning and joy in the air, crime is down. Four straight days passed without a homicide, per the Washington Post. Overnight incidents are down, too.

     How refreshing to see that sports, beyond the pandemic peak, still can unite divided cities. Philadelphia’s racial issues are as horrific as anyone else’s. At the moment, all anyone cares about, from Tioga-Nicetown to the Main Line, is whether the Phillies’ prodigious power hitters — Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Rhys Hoskins and Nick Castellanos, who are guaranteed a collective $632.2 million from an ownership group that swung open the bank doors — can rattle Houston’s lights-out pitching. Or whether the fans can unnerve the Astros with “Cheaters!” chants, though the electronic sign-stealing scandal was five years ago. And as they wait for the Series games at night, they’ll tout Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts as an MVP candidate — while also expecting improvement to maximize his skilled playmakers. The Sixers? The hot-take refrain: Doc has to go, and Embiid never will make music with James Harden until the latter shaves his beard, which may or may not come before Tyrese Maxey make a defensive stop.

     The sports inferno burns 24/7. Why do you think t-shirts and songs are available online, commemorating Hoskins’ bat spike, Schwarber’s orbit-touching homer in Game 1 and, of course, Harper’s “my house” shriek before his legendary homer? If anyone deserved to flip the bird at the fans, after rediscovering his home-run stroke this postseason, it’s the aggrieved Hoskins, who has endured so many seasons of losing. Instead, he shook off a history of boos and enjoyed the rave.

     “It feels like we’re living it,” Hoskins said. “The red towels. It’s deafening loud, right? As soon as you step on the field, really in batting practice, you can just kind of feel the electricity building. I need some more of it.”

     It’s coming. As long as Harper is in uniform and healthy, having missed 52 games this season after Blake Snell broke his left thumb with a pitch, you gather the Phillies have a puncher’s chance against the Astros, who are 7-0 this postseason after a sweep of silent Aaron Judge and the Yankees. When Castellanos caught the final out in right field, he made sure to hand the baseball to the man who muscled his way into the bosom of an unforgiving city.

     “It’s his time,” Castellanos said. “I know it, I think everybody knows it.”

     He even likes the damn mascot, still wearing a Phanatic headband and batting gloves. My God, is Bryce Harper bigger than Rocky Balboa?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.