Realmuto: ‘I can promise you, nobody’s excited to play the Phillies right now’

ST. LOUIS — The Phillies’ celebration was just starting. The team posed for a picture in front of the pitcher’s mound at Busch Stadium and now the party was headed inside to the clubhouse and a stash of champagne.

In the dugout, Rob Thomson grabbed J.T. Realmuto just as he was about to disappear down the stairs.

The 59-year-old former minor-league catcher told the 31-year-old All-Star catcher to get ready to make an announcement before the first cork was popped.

Up in the clubhouse, Thomson congratulated the club, praised it for its unselfishness and clutch work in beating the St. Louis Cardinals two days in a row to win the best-of-three National League wild-card series. Thomson reminded the club that it still had more work to do as it headed to Atlanta for the next stop on the postseason trail, the NL Division Series.

Before Thomson would allow the first champagne cork to be popped, he wanted to make sure Realmuto was front and center. Realmuto emerged from a crowd, stood in front of his teammates and said …

“Eleven more, Topper.”

Eleven more wins and the Phillies are World Champions.

It might sound far-fetched, especially for a team that went 14-17 over the final month of the regular season, especially for a team that went just 9 for 57 (.158) at the plate in the two games against the Cardinals, but the Phillies do have a chance.

Thanks to their pitching — 13 scoreless innings from starters Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola and some excellent work from the bullpen, particularly David Robertson in Game 1 and Seranthony Dominguez in Game 2 — the Phils are alive in the October baseball tournament.

And they’re confident.

“I can promise you, nobody’s excited to play the Phillies right now,” Realmuto said. 

“Not one person on this team is surprised. We all expected to be here. This is where we wanted to be to start the season and we’re not done yet.”

After rallying for six runs in the ninth inning to stun the Cardinals, 6-3, in Game 1, the Phillies couldn’t wait to get to Busch Stadium on Saturday. 

A huge and loud crowd of 48,515 greeted the Phillies, and in the top of the second inning, Bryce Harper quieted the place when he hit a first-pitch curveball from Miles Mikolas into the right-field seats for a 1-0 lead.

“We felt like it was our night to begin with and as soon as Bryce hit that home run, we felt like we were going to win the game,” Realmuto said. “There’s a lot of confidence in that dugout right now and with the way Aaron has been throwing the ball, we were confident he and the bullpen were going to hold it down.”

Four seasons into a 10-year, $330 million contract, Harper is finally in the playoffs. He delivered Saturday night. His second-inning homer was a continuation of the momentum that the Phillies built in the ninth inning Friday.

No player in baseball hears more trash talk from fans than Harper. It must have been fun to hush the largest crowd ever to see a playoff game at this version of Busch Stadium.

“Always,” Harper said. “Whenever you can go up, 1-0, on the road and take the air out of a city, that’s what you want to do.”

Harper’s homer electrified the Phillies’ dugout.

“The first thing Bryce told me today is we are not losing this game,” Rhys Hoskins said. “Then he goes out and hits a home run in his first at-bat. That’s MVP-type stuff right there. It was awesome.”

The Cardinals have two MVP candidates in the middle of their lineup in Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado. Nola struck out both of them with a man on base to end the sixth. Dominguez struck out both of them with two men on base in the eighth.

With a full count, Dominguez got Goldschmidt, a 115-RBI man, to chase a 99-mph sinker below the knees. Before the pitch, Realmuto went to the mound and told Dominguez there was no one else the Phillies wanted on the mound at that point in the game than him.

“That’s exactly the Seranthony we expected,” Realmuto said. “Two Hall of Fame hitters having Hall of Fame years and Nola got the job done in the sixth and Seranthony got the job done in the eighth. It was awesome.

“This is so much fun. I can’t wait to get back to Philly.”

The Phillies will open the Division Series on Tuesday night in Atlanta. After four straight road playoff games, they will host one Friday when the best-of-five series shifts to Philadelphia. It’ll be the first playoff game at Citizens Bank Park since 2011.

“I hope the fans believe,” Hoskins said. “We knew that if we got in, we had a chance. The place is going to be absolutely rocking. All that stuff I’ve heard about Red October — let’s go, let’s bring it on.”