PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 All Philadelphia slugger Kyle Schwarber could do was smile as he surveyed the situation while heading to the plate Sunday in the bottom of the ninth inning of a tied game with the St. Louis Cardinals.<\/p>\n
The Phillies had pieced together an unlikely rally from a four-run deficit in the home half of the ninth and Schwarber was stepping in against St. Louis Cardinals closer Riley O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
It was at that point that Schwarber shot a grinning glance at teammate Trea Turner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just there chuckling, laughing and smiling with Trea (about) how we got to that point,\u201d Schwarber said.<\/p>\n
Schwarber then did his part.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen when the ball came off the bat, I stood there and watched. It was a little bit of a shock that we were able to do that in that fashion,\u201d Schwarber said. \u201cBut that\u2019s why you keep playing. That\u2019s why you play all the outs. Never give up, and keep fighting until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
The slugger fought to a 2-2 count, then took a swing that even he couldn\u2019t downplay.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was awesome,\u201d he said with a shrug. \u201cJust a little bit of disbelief.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shot over the Citizens Bank Park \u201cbatter\u2019s eye\u201d traveled an estimated 459 feet, good for his major league-leading 39th home run, and a rather incredible 6-4 Phillies victory, their ninth straight.<\/p>\n
It was the Phillies\u2019 first walk-off win by home run since Schwarber accomplished the feat on July 9, 2023, against the Dodgers.<\/p>\n
And, it was the most resounding blow during an August rebirth. In a few weeks\u2019 time they\u2019ve gone from falling behind in the wild-card race to erasing much of what seemed like an insurmountable Atlanta lead in the NL East. Pending the Braves\u2019 game with Milwaukee Sunday night, the Phillies were 2 1\/2 games back in the division.<\/p>\n
To that end, there is no disbelief on Schwarber\u2019s part. He pointed out that he and four teammates all had two strikes on them during their two-out at-bats in the ninth.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it\u2019s a lot of really good baseball, complete baseball,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re out there just hitting homers and relying on that. I feel like there\u2019s a lot of things we\u2019re doing really well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harper, who has reached base safely in 25 straight games, had led off the ninth with a double, but two quick outs later the fans started packing up. But J.T. Realmuto singled, Justin Crawford walked, and utility man Edmundo Sosa hit a three-run double. Then came a game-tying single by seldom-used Bryan De La Cruz, followed by the winning stroke by Schwarber.<\/p>\n
All of that off O\u2019Brien, who had stayed in the game even after mound visit by manager Oli Marmot as Schwarber waited to hit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a winning team,\u201d Sosa said. \u201cWe\u2019re the Phillies. I can say we\u2019re really surprised, but when we\u2019re late in the game we never stop fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (AP) \u2014 All Philadelphia slugger Kyle Schwarber could do was smile as he surveyed the situation while…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":786686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2403],"tags":[5,1657,160,6924,113,5159,81,4,9500,9501,96617,9496,82611,9497,82856,36947,21752,673,67,4311,4310,1713],"class_list":["post-786685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-louis-cardinals","tag-baseball","tag-bryan-de-la-cruz","tag-cardinals","tag-edmundo-sosa","tag-j-t-realmuto","tag-justin-crawford","tag-kyle-schwarber","tag-mlb","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100502-member-choice-sports-option","tag-phillies-cardinals-kyle-schwarber","tag-product-30599-ap-sports-news-s-wire-only","tag-product-31999-ap-online-baseball-news","tag-product-32562-ap-online-other-sports-news","tag-product-40795-ap-missouri-sports-only","tag-product-40809-ap-pennsylvania-sports-only","tag-riley-obrien","tag-st-louis","tag-st-louis-cardinals","tag-stlouis","tag-stlouiscardinals","tag-trea-turner"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=786685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/786685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/786686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=786685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=786685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=786685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}