PHILADELPHIA — As if the Atlanta Braves hadn’t spent the last three-plus decades defining baseball postseason failure, there was the most ordinary player in their everyday lineup the other day doing his best to make sure the tradition would continue.
A 28-year-old career .247 hitter who stumbled into one of the great lineups in history, Orlando Arcia could not allow an impressive Braves victory in Game 2 of the NLDS simply to marinate. Rather, he chose to take on a presumptive Hall of Famer in a test of decorum, waiting until the cameras and notepads rolled into the clubhouse to insult Bryce Harper from afar.
“Ha ha, atta boy, Harper,” Arcia was heard to say, and repeat, within earshot of the world baseball press, delighted as he was that the Phillies’ first baseman had just been caught at the business end of a game-ending double play.
There the Braves were, their season likely just saved and on their way to Citizens Bank Park, where the emotions of 45,798 people could have leaned either way given the deflating fashion in which the Phillies had just lost. Yet Arcia could not resist being the guy at the end of a college basketball bench waving the towel.
Maybe if Ronald Acuna Jr., the likely MVP, had said something, it could have been ruled a form of leadership. Ozzie Albies might have had the same diplomatic immunity. Austin Riley. Matt Olson. Spencer Strider. Some loudmouth camped in the stands.
But, no, Orlando Arcia his own self had to prod Harper into one of the many signature games of his career, a 10-2 Phillies victory that pushed the Braves to within a loss of the usual.
“I don’t think Bryce needs anything to motivate him,” Rob Thomson had said early Wednesday. “But I know what you’re talking about. And if that adds to his motivation, then thank you.”
For one reason, not two, it will never be known whether Harper’s two-home-run contribution to the Phillies’ Game 3 statement was a reverberation of Arcia’s wagging tongue. That reason: He does that kind of thing all the time anyway. Just the same, Harper did not miss the chance to smirk at Arcia on his way around second base after his fifth-inning home run, his second of the game, the national TV cameramen nicely capturing the story behind the story and the insult to the insult.
“Yeah,” Harper said. “I stared right at him.”
As for his first homer — the one that most mattered, given the early tension around the joint — Harper didn’t have the chance, because Arcia elected to pivot the other way as he trotted by. The NHL — which art-formed the concept — could not have unnecessarily drawn more sour blood between games of a series if the Stanley Cup were on the line.
Afterward, both Harper and Arcia kind of tried to move on. Harper settled for saying, “It’s a super competitive game that we play, and I enjoy commentary and things like that.” Arcia, through an interpreter, decided to imply that what was said in a clubhouse full of recorders and reporters should have remained there, but was not inclined to add that to his list of avoidable battles.
“He can look wherever he wants,” Arcia said. “I can’t control where he looks.”
The Phillies were behind, 1-0, heading into the bottom of the third, and the atmosphere in the park was so much quiet as uneasy. But Nick Castellanos led off with the first of his two home runs, and six batters later Arcia had to know what was coming. With Brandon Marsh and Trea Turner on and Braves starter Bryce Elder unfit for the moment, Harper would plant an 84 mph, 2-1 slider 408 feet into the audience in right. That gave the Phillies a 4-1 lead and an excuse to exhale for the first time since the Game 2 melt-away, particularly with how smoothly Aaron Nola was pitching.
Arcia, who did answer with an RBI single in the sixth, will never be sure if his taunts gave Harper motivation.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what he was thinking.”
Even if Harper initially felt like thinking one way, he was semi-prodded by his teammates — who couldn’t resist bringing Arcia’s comments to his attention — to think another.
“They just kind of told me about it and looked at me,” Harper said. “And then they were like, ‘What are you going to do?’”
They didn’t need to ask. They knew. And by the time Harper dropped his second home run over the center field fence, it was mostly for rub-it-in effect. A taunting, stadium-wide tomahawk-chop chant soon would follow.
“It’s as nuts of a place as I’ve ever been,” Braves manager Brian Snitker has said. “That’s for sure.”
One of the great players in history helped make it even more that way in a game the Phillies deeply needed.
So did one of the not-so-great.
Contact Jack McCaffery at jmccaffery@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont
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