A sixth straight home playoff win has the Phillies starting to feel like World Series destiny

There is a school of thought that says moments like these are nothing more than the product of chance. A low pressure system forms in the Gulf of Mexico and blows ashore. A band of showers breaks off and drifts diagonally across the Mason-Dixon. It arrives from the southeast a couple of hours before a baseball-mad city is set to host its first World Series game in 13 years. It lingers just long enough to ensure an extra day of rest for a team in dire need. When it departs, it leaves a mass of warm, frictionless air hovering in its wake.

It happens. The same air, the same water, tracing the same paths for millions of years. This time, there happened to be a game.

All of it is random. A former Phillies draft pick develops a blood clot, retires from baseball, and, two years later, bequeaths his name to a son. A 15-year-old in the Venezuelan farmlands picks up a baseball and toes the rubber for the first time. On a 60-degree night in early November, Lance McCullers Jr. and Ranger Suárez take the mound on their sport’s biggest stage. One of them signed for $2.5 million, the other for $25,000. The only connection is that they happened to be here. Two stories intertwining, no deeper one in play. Random variables in a random interval of time and space.

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That’s probably the way it is. That’s probably the way it has always been.

And yet ...

In this particular time, in this particular space, in this particular intersection of the two, it is getting increasingly difficult to ignore the possibility that the Phillies are burrowed in some supernatural glitch. They are not the first team to have appointed themselves the true representatives of destiny. But by the end of a 7-0 victory that left this 87-win team just two more away from a championship, you couldn’t help but wonder. Maybe fate really does assign executors. And maybe it really has chosen the Phillies.

Nonsense? Sure. But isn’t it kind of hilarious how serious it seems?

There were moments on Tuesday night when all you could do was laugh. At Nick Castellanos making another sliding catch. At Alec Bohm picking up a bobbled ball and calmly throwing a seed to first base. At Bryce Harper smacking his second game-changing home run into the home crowd in as many pitches, nine days after the first one clinched the Phillies a berth in this World Series.

What if a city that had lost its faith in baseball got itself the one team that could make it believe?

“When you can literally feel the whole city of Philadelphia behind you, you kind of just go out there and have fun at that point,” center fielder Brandon Marsh said.

He felt it in the bottom of the second inning, when he followed Bohm’s solo home run with one of his own. Kyle Schwarber felt it before Suárez’s first pitch, as he turned to the fans in the left-field seats and told them that he’d need them all night long. He waved them to their feet, and then he waved to foul territory too. Then he sent a changeup into the center-field shrubbery and thanked them for their efforts.

“They’re doing a fantastic job for us right now,” said Schwarber, whose two-run home run in the bottom of the fifth inning gave the Phillies a 6-0 lead.

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Sometimes, all you can do is shake your head. McCullers, the son and namesake of the Phillies’ second-round selection in 1982, spent 4⅓ innings engulfed by a crowd that felt like an entire city. Since breaking into the majors in 2015, nobody who’d thrown as many innings as him had allowed as few home runs. In the previous 94 years of World Series history, only three teams had hit five of them in a single game. The Phillies became the fourth. McCullers allowed them all.

His counterpart allowed none. Not even a run. Two years ago, Suárez was a middling long man with a 4.66 career ERA. On Tuesday night, he was the reason the Phillies were able to waltz to within two wins of a title. A fastball that typically sits at 93 mph routinely was breaking 95. Castellanos’ sliding first-inning catch helped provide the added electricity.

“I like flashing them the outs, and it fires me up when I get it all back,” said the once-maligned right fielder, who turned to thank the crowd after his latest highlight-reel play. “We’re all in this together.”

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Two wins. That’s it. They are two wins away. The best team in the majors against the worst team in the playoff field. That is where things stand. Up two games to one, with two more games to go in a ballpark in which they are 6-0 this postseason. Aaron Nola is on the mound in Game 4. Suárez is available to start Game 7 if necessary. Both are in play because of a window of rain that rendered the original schedule unplayable.

It’s always dangerous to declare predestination. Two out of four is a daunting proposition against an opponent like the Astros. Yet as the final out popped into the catcher’s mitt and sent an already mad stadium into one last explosion, you couldn’t help but wonder.