'What a gift': Phillies clinch second consecutive NL East title

LOS ANGELES -- Garrett Stubbs beelined into the kitchen of the visitors’ clubhouse at Dodger Stadium.

He needed apple juice.

The Phillies had just clinched their second consecutive NL East championship on Monday night with a 6-5 victory over the Dodgers in 10 innings. It was a wild, fun ending to a long day. The Phillies landed in L.A. a little before 2 a.m. local time, several hours later than scheduled because they had another mechanical issue with their plane. (It has happened a few times this season.) But the Phillies had to play the Dodgers at 7:10 p.m. PT, regardless of what time they landed and got to their hotel.

It wasn’t ideal, but they didn’t make it a big deal.

They played. They won. They partied.

“It’s apple juice!” Bryce Harper said, smiling, holding up a small, clear container.

Harper doesn’t drink, so he wanted to make sure everybody knew before the juice was poured into a beer bong.

“Just in case my wife is watching,” Harper joked.

Harper chugged it. His teammates cheered.

The Phillies started Monday night’s game with their NL East-clinching magic number at one. Moments later, Kyle Schwarber hit his 53rd homer of the season to give the Phillies a 1-0 lead, though the Dodgers would carry a 3-1 lead into the seventh, when the bottom half of the Phillies’ lineup stepped up.

Otto Kemp hit a ground-rule double to left field to start the frame. Bryson Stott’s one-out single scored Kemp. Weston Wilson crushed a go-ahead, two-run home run to center field to give the Phillies a 4-3 lead.

It didn’t last. Orion Kerkering allowed a game-tying homer to Mookie Betts in the bottom of the inning. But Harper seized control in the eighth, ripping a go-ahead homer into the right-center-field seats to give the Phillies a 5-4 lead.

Harper had not yet reached first base when the ball cleared the fence. He raised his right arm into the air. He pumped his fist on his way to second. He celebrated a couple more times as he rounded the bases.

He clapped his hands again after he touched home plate.

“That was a heavyweight fight, man,” Harper said.

The Phillies expect more fights like this beginning next month.

If the season ended on Monday, the Phillies would have a first-round bye and be the NL’s No. 2 seed. They could face the Dodgers in the NL Division Series.

The Dodgers won the World Series last year. The Phillies believe they can win it this year. They have fallen short the past three seasons. They lost the World Series in 2022. They lost the NLCS in ’23. They lost the NLDS in ’24.

Maybe this time, it’s different.

Maybe this team is different.

“We keep pushing, we keep grinding,” Schwarber said. “It’s a lot of the same faces, right? Everyone knows and expects what we expect out of each other. I think that’s the great thing. We expect a lot out of ourselves.”

Many of the faces are the same from ’22. But there were additions. There’s Harrison Bader, Jhoan Duran and David Robertson, who joined the Phillies this summer. Duran and Robertson have been godsends to the Phillies’ bullpen. Duran has been magnificent, even with the game-tying homer he allowed in the ninth to Andy Pages.

“I wanted to win out there, I wanted the save,” Duran said. “But I can't be perfect every time.”

After J.T. Realmuto’s sac fly in the top of the 10th, Robertson loaded the bases in the bottom half, but he did not allow a run to score.

“I knew this team was good,” Robertson said. “I knew we had a good chance to win the division. Definitely didn't picture myself being out there in the extra innings with runners everywhere and trying to make a pitch just to get out of it. But this is an intense environment. It was a fun game. It felt like a playoff game.”

• Postseason FAQ: What's next for Phillies?

The Phillies traded two top prospects for Duran. They traded a couple lesser prospects for Bader. They signed Robertson as a free agent, which pushed them further past the luxury tax, which means more tax penalties.

So what?

“Money’s easy,” Phillies managing partner John Middleton said. “That’s the easy part.”

Bader, like Duran and Robertson, has been a gift.

His teammates and the city have fallen in love with him because of his play, both offensively and defensively, and the energy he brings to the field. He utters the phrase “what a gift” so much that manager Rob Thomson referenced it when Schwarber hit his 50th homer last week. Stubbs had T-shirts made.

“I think energy is everything, and I absolutely love what I do,” Bader said. “And it's my personality. And I’m just thankful that my teammates accept my personality and let me go out there and do my stuff on that field. And I think you can just run with really good energy. So I just share my love of the game with them.”

So he really says “what a gift” so much that it deserved to be put on a T-shirt?

“I have it tattooed on my arm,” Bader said, pointing to the words on his left forearm. “It just puts a lot of things into perspective, honestly, and as soon as you say, ‘what a gift,’ it changes your mentality on things. Even if it's something that's bad or annoying or uncomfortable, it just immediately changes your perspective. It’s like, you're sitting in traffic, you're late, you're stressed, and you just look up, you say, ‘what a gift.’ It changes everything.”

Bader said he got the tattoo in the offseason.

Meant to be, maybe.

“It’s meant to be,” he said.