To believe, or not to believe: The Phillies keep making it tough for fans to decide

Let’s be charitable and say that Philadelphia sports fans aren’t generally an optimistic bunch.

In fairness, it’s not like that approach to fandom is unjustified. The Eagles went over 50 years between titles. The Flyers haven’t won a championship since 1975. The Sixers make sport out of finding new ways to torture their fans every year. The Phillies have lost more games than any other team in North American professional sports.

But there’s something strange about this particular incarnation of the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s true that they haven’t yet won a title. It’s also true that for all their roster strengths, they have multiple glaring, potentially season-killing flaws. And far from avoiding heartbreaking defeats, they suffer them on the regular. Yet Philly fans, despite their natural pessimism and their knowledge that things don’t tend to work out for their sports teams, seem to really want to buy fully into this unique Phillies club.

Which brings us to Tuesday night’s 7-6 loss to the Atlanta Braves.

It would have been one thing if the Phillies had simply rolled over and accepted defeat when the Braves pushed their edge to 6-1 in the fifth inning. After all, Atlanta is a juggernaut, the best team in baseball by runs scored and by record. “Wheeler just didn’t have it tonight,” they could have concluded. “We’ll split the series tomorrow.”

But the Phillies don’t concede games — they keep fighting. The Braves received an unwelcome reminder of that truth on Tuesday, another reason why if at all possible, they’d surely love to avoid facing their divisional nemesis for a second straight year in the postseason.

Trea Turner chipped away at the lead with an RBI single in the seventh. Two eighth inning homers — by Bryce Harper and Bryson Stott — cut the deficit to just one. And then, it was the red-hot Turner once more in the ninth, hitting a bomb to left field to send the game to extra innings. Yet again, the Phillies had executed a dramatic comeback, and sent the faithful into a frenzy.

Just like they did on August 23rd, when Harper hit a game-tying, three-run bomb in the ninth. And on August 30th, when he gave his club the lead with an eighth inning base-clearer. And September 1st, when Turner blasted one of his own in the eighth to put the Phillies on top. And finally, on Monday against these same Braves, when Harper yet again tied the game with a clutch ninth inning homer.

The unifying thread connecting all of those electrifying comebacks — and Tuesday night’s as well? All five ultimately ended in Phillies losses.

Which brings us to the real conundrum here for Philadelphia sports fans: How does one handle rooting for a team that is endearing in no small part because of their undeniable “never say die” approach, but all too often still ends up… dead? (Or, at the very least, walking off the field as the losers.)

To be fair, it’s not just the Phillies’ penchant for comebacks that has fans returning in droves to Citizens Bank Park. There’s a real connection being built between the players and the fans, from Harper’s unabashed love for the city, to the goofy postgame celebrations, to the team’s sincere public accountability. The standing ovation for Turner at CBP in August wasn’t done out of pity — this is Philadelphia, let’s be serious — but because fans instinctively recognized that Turner’s big problem was that he cared too much, not that he was content to loaf and cash enormous checks for the next decade. The fans want to believe in this team. And when you see comebacks like the one last night, it’s not hard to convince yourself that the Phillies could be a team of destiny, that the only way a season from a club this resilient can possibly end is with a title.

And in those moments, it’s easy to ignore the warning signs. The fact that the bullpen only has a few more weeks to steady itself and again pitch to its potential on a nightly basis. That, despite clear improvements, the Phils remain an underwhelming defensive club on the whole — especially if Kyle Schwarber has to take the field. That their second-best starting pitcher has stunk pretty much all year. That at key moments, they can lose all sense of plate discipline and situational hitting awareness (looking at you, J.T. Realmuto and Nick Castellanos on Tuesday). And, of course, that the playoff run which sparked all this goodwill from the fans in the first place didn’t end in glory, but in the same exasperation that set in for the fifth time in three weeks on Tuesday — the feeling of a storybook ending ripped away at the last possible moment.

The Phillies are so close to greatness right now. They’re tough. They’re thrilling. And most importantly, they’re fun. As a result, they have the full support of Philadelphia — a city notoriously prone to pessimism — despite their penchant for swinging wildly between spectacular moments and heartbreaking falters.

But belief? Philly fans want to believe that come October, their baseball club will deliver all of the former and none of the latter.

Endings like the one on Tuesday night, however, are just enough to keep that belief from solidifying into certainty.