The Phillies, America’s team, win Game 1 with J.T. Realmuto’s hits and Rob Thomson’s guts

HOUSTON — The nation rejoices this morning, because, these days, Jason Kelce is dead wrong.

Everyone likes us. And yes, we care.

The Eagles’ center sang that song all the way up Broad Street after the Eagles beat the villainous Patriots in Super Bowl LII. Kelce attended last weekend’s NLCS clinchers, sending the underdog Phillies to Houston with his best wishes. He knew: Hungry dogs run faster.

Sure enough, Friday night, the ever-Fightin’ Phillies added another chapter to their fairy-tale season. They spotted the Astros a five-run lead through the first three innings of Game 1 of the World Series, but, thanks to another episode of brilliant manipulation by rookie manager Rob Thomson and utter indifference to logic and expectation, roared all the way back for a 6-5, 10-inning win Friday night.

With the guile and perseverance that marks this as the most thrilling season in franchise history, the team that fired its manager on June 3, the team that needed 160 games to back into the postseason with the first No. 6 seed in baseball history, won Game 1 of a World Series they have no business being in. They won against the best team in baseball over the last six seasons — a team against which they have played extra innings in five of their six postseason games, going back to the 1980 NLCS (the Astros used to be an NL club).

They won when J.T. Realmuto, the Oklahoman, made his Red River home folks prouder than ever, with a two-run double off Astros starter Justin Verlander to tie it in the fifth and a slicing, carrying, 3-2 solo homer off Luis Garcia to lead off the top of the 10th. He didn’t think it was going. Not until it was gone.

“It’s been a different hero every night,” Realmuto said. “I guess tonight was my turn.”

Realmuto also doubled in the two tying runs in the fifth, and got clocked by a foul ball that unmasked him in the guts of the game, but no one in his dugout expected any less.

“He’s just the real deal,” said game-saver Nick Castellanos.

Realmuto didn’t relish the game-winner as much for its interstate rivalry ramifications as for its relative relevance. Realmuto, who won state titles in baseball and football at Carl Albert High in Midwest City 450 miles north of Houston, had 20 family members in the stands:

“And those are just the ones I know about.”

This win, this night, was a wholesome elixir for a dying pastime. The Phillies have stolen home-field advantage for the fourth straight time this postseason, and, in Philly, that’s a helluva thing.

Thanks in part to the underdog run the Eagles went on in 2017, and thanks in part to the arrogant misdeeds of the Astros in the past, America is a nation whose World Series sympathies are directed on one franchise, and one franchise only. An extremely unscientific study — 100,000 geotagged tweets tracked by an online betting site — showed that only six of 50 states favored the Astros, who are in the Series for the fourth time in the last six seasons. They won in 2017, but, to the delight of citizens who dislike cheaters, they lost in 2019 and 2021.

The Phillies, with their rascal of a mascot, an equally motley and hairy roster, and their team anthem, remarkably, co-written by Robyn, are the darlings of baseball. The Astros, meanwhile, are the villains. They’re the Patriots of Major League Baseball: a well-built, well-run, talented team that cheated to win.

» READ MORE: Brush up on your trash talk: Everything you need to know about the Houston Astros’ cheating scandal

But Realmuto is part of an $800 million mercenary crop that Phillies owner John Middleton has been assembling for four years. A wise investment.

Because, now, they’re three wins from their third World Series title in their 140-year history.

Like so many of the Phillies’ big wins this season, it was unpretty. They needed three big defensive plays from third baseman Alec Bohm and one from right fielder Nick Castellanos, whose diving catch of Jeremy Pena’s blooper in the ninth kept the tying and winning runs from scoring. He made a similar play in the ninth inning of Game 1 of the NLDS in Atlanta, diving to rob William Contreras.

Castellanos, urged by left fielder Kyle Schwarber, inched in a bit after Jose Altuve stole second base, but still ...

“I thought it was hit so softly that I didn’t think he was going to get there,” Realmuto said.

Game 1′s have been special this postseason.

The Phillies scored six runs in the ninth inning of Game 1 in St. Louis to erase a 2-0 deficit and start a sweep in the wild-card round. They won Game 1 of the NLDS in in Atlanta thanks to Castellanos’ glove for a first time.

“I’ve had a couple people say that it seemed like a carbon copy of each other,” Castellanos said.

They won Game 1 of the NLCS in San Diego when Zack Wheeler and the bullpen shut out the Padres as Bryce Harper homered. And they won Game 1 here, thanks to The Catch, The Catcher, and, especially, The Skip.

Game 1 starter Aaron Nola was 2-0 with a 0.00 ERA in two career starts against the Astros, with 19 strikeouts and one walk entering the game. He dealt 6⅔ scoreless innings Oct. 3 in Houston, when the Phillies clinched their wild-card berth. But he gave up five runs in 4⅓ innings Friday night. The Phillies hitters awakened with three runs in the fourth, and went double-walk-double to tie it at 5 in the top of the fifth.

Then, Thomson fired a big bullet in the fifth.

He used lights-out lefty Jose Alvarado, who’d been a late-innings assassin for the last four months. Nola began the inning with 76 pitches, having given up five runs, and was allowed to face right-handed hitter Jeremy Peña. But there was no way Thomson was going to let him tackle lefthanded-hitting AL MVP candidate Yordan Alvarez.

» READ MORE: Resilience, heart, whatever: The Phillies are three wins from a title, and it isn’t going away

After Nola got the first hitter of the fifth, the game became a study in micromanagement. Thomson needed 14 outs at that point. It was 17 outs, ultimately.

“He wanted to make sure we kept the momentum,” Realmuto said.

It was a gamble.

Alvarado hadn’t been used as early as the fifth inning since May 30, when Joe Girardi was the manager and Thomas was the bench coach. Nevertheless, Alvarado retired Alvarez and righthanded hitter Alex Bregman to end the fifth, got lefthander Kyle Tucker — who’d homered twice — to start the sixth, and was done.

Zach Eflin finished the sixth, got the first two of the seventh, then left for ... presumed Game 3 starter Ranger Suárez? Absolutely.

Thomson called on his most dependable remaining lefty because Alvarez was back in the box. Suárez is a former reliever who closed out Game 5 of the NLCS. He closed out Alvarez, too, with an evil, 3-2 cutter on the low inside black that Alvarez swung over.

“I trust anything that man does,” Castellanos said.

Suárez will start Game 3 if he feels OK, Thomson said. We reckon he’ll feel OK.

Seranthony Domínguez took the ninth. Former closer David Robertson finished it with a wooly 10th.

That left J.T. Realmuto as the hero of the day, Rob Thomson as the super genius ... and the Philadelphia Phillies as America’s Team.