Philadelphia Phillies: Bryce Harper’s short, partly inspiring speech

It had been three days since Philadelphia Phillies team leader Bryce Harper gathered his team for a short meeting following their six-run, blown-lead loss to the Mets. The meeting took, apparently, only about a minute, and Harper reminded his teammates that the embarrassing loss didn’t “define” them.

Then it rained for two days, which obviously prevented any quick Phillies bounce back from the kind of defeat that’s happened only five times in their 140-year history, a loss in the ninth inning after building at least a six-run lead.

What effect would Bryce Harper’s short speech have after an embarrassing Philadelphia Phillies loss?

Of course, this hideous defeat on May 5 followed closely another embarrassing loss to the Mets, a combined Gotham no-hitter on April 29. So, maybe two days off were a blessing. The stinkers were piling up for the Fightin’s.

A double-header with New York faced the 11-15 team on May 8, though. The extended event was threatened by continuing on-and-off rain, cold temperatures, and wind.

With no game news from the previous day, the hard-copy morning Inquirer included a two-day-old report that Phillies team president Dave Dombrowski still had high hopes for his offensive mashers. His batters led the NL with a 43.7 percent hard-hit rate.

Unfortunately, as is all too obvious, hard-hit balls never make onto that part of the scoreboard that matters.

In the day’s first game, the disgraced team handed New York’s ace, Max Scherzer, a 3-2 loss, his first since last May 30. In swirling winds, the Phillies mostly hit balls just over the infield. The exception to that was Harper’s solo homer in the first inning, which was slammed into the right-field bleachers.

Before game two, part-time Phillies announcer Mike Schmidt suggested the next contest would make Mother’s Day a “defining day” in Philadelphia’s season.

Apparently, in Philly, all important sports declarations require some form of the word “define.”

The starter for the Phillies in game two, however, was young Cristopher Sanchez, who was making his first start since last season, and only his second at the MLB level. The originally scheduled starter, Zach Eflin, had landed on the COVID-19 protocol injured list before the first game Sunday.

By the middle of the game, the Mets starter, Chris Bassitt, had retired 11 in a row, and the Mets led, 6-1. Sanchez was long gone. Jean Segura had hit his 100th career home run, Pete Alonso had two homers, and the Phillies had an opportunity to repay the Mets for their big inning the previous Thursday night.

They didn’t. The final tally remained 6-1.

On a day of definitions, the re-made Phillies apparently weren’t quite ready to re-define what they were back after their first week of play, an underachieving, sub-.500 team. That wasn’t really on Bryce Harper, though.