Citizens Bank Park feels like an invincible environment for Phillies right now

When I walked out of the Wells Fargo Center after the Flyers’ victory last night, my phone was (of course) tuned into a live stream of Game 2 of the NLCS between the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks — a game that was being played just a few hundred feet away, across two parking lots.

The score was 2-0 on my screen, and would remain that way for the next five or so minutes. But I knew long before the score changed on tape that it was no longer 2-0 in reality. First, something sounding a bit like a gasp carried over the two packed lots. And it only grew louder. And louder. Until it felt like the air itself was actually shaking, as 45,412 screamed themselves hoarse in honor of Kyle Schwarber’s second home run of the evening. The fireworks were visible, but barely audible. The crowd had done the news-spreading work on its own.

Citizens Bank Park isn’t a baseball stadium right now. It’s a madhouse, a zoo, a combination rocket launch site and ancient Roman coliseum. And I truly don’t know how an opposing team is going to win in that environment for the rest of the postseason.

This isn’t anything new, to be clear. The Phillies went 6-0 to kick off last year’s postseason, and the place was rocking then as well. The first home game — best known for Rhys Hoskins’ three-run HR (and subsequent epic bat spike) that broke both Spencer Strider and the Atlanta Braves — set the tone from the start, not just that good things could happen at baseball playoff games in Philadelphia, but that legendary things could.

It took a combined no-hitter by the Houston Astros in Game 4 of the World Series to finally break the spell and do the seemingly-impossible: shut up Philadelphia fans.

If anything, Houston presented the best formula for surviving CBP: Don’t let the Phillies get off to a good start. Even in Game 5 the next night — which was incredibly loud, I can personally confirm — there was a nervous buzz all game, in part because of the frustrating no-hitter the night before and the tied series, but also because the Astros had scored the opening run of the game courtesy of their first two batters. The Phillies never led in that game, as close as it was from start to finish. There was never that sense of inevitable victory that turns Citizens Bank Park from run-of-the-mill loud into party-like-it’s-the-end-of-the-world level chaos.

That hasn’t been a problem this postseason. And in the NLCS, the Phils have truly perfected their own formula: Get the party started as early as possible, and then ride out the fan-generated vibes to their logical conclusion.

In Game 1, Schwarber kicked off the festivities on the very first pitch with a moon shot to right field which sent the Philly faithful into hysterics. In Game 2, they were kind enough to wait until Batter No. 2 to do the same, with Trea Turner performing the honors. From then on, Citizens Bank Park became an avalanche, an unstoppable crush of snow barreling down the mountainside, and no mere mortals were halting it.

Give credit to the Diamondbacks. They weathered it about as well as any team could have done in Game 1; Zac Gallen may not have had his best stuff, but despite multiple innings of deafening sing-song chants of his last name, he survived and gave his team a chance to steal a road win in the final innings. Merrill Kelly basically did the same thing in Game 2 for nearly six innings, before Schwarber’s second HR of the night and a high pitch count ended his evening.

Then, the floodgates opened up. The 15th inning of the series was when finally, the hundreds of thousands of gallons of melted snow rushed in to flood Arizona’s whole operation. By the following inning, the Diamondbacks were so rattled that they couldn’t even manage to catch a cheap infield fly ball.

Hello, 2-0 Phillies series lead.

Despite Kelly’s pregame comments prior to Game 2 downplaying the crowd noise in Philadelphia, it has to be absolutely relentless for opposing players. Especially when their club is protecting a lead, the fans just never let up. And the Phillies players know exactly how to fire them up even further, constantly gesturing to the crowd and feeding them increasingly unhinged celebrations, from the Major League-inspired “big balls” bit after important hits, to Bryce Harper’s spontaneous “blowing out the candles” maneuver while crossing home plate on his birthday, to Garrett Stubbs’ bizarre propensity to maniacally slap his own butt in the dugout when a gamechanging play goes down.

Not that anyone is advocating for this, but my guess is that it feels like at any moment, the fans could spill over onto the field college football-style and overwhelm everything in sight. In fact, one actually tried it on Tuesday, and even that just became part of the sideshow when a security guard channeled his inner Brian Dawkins and laid him out, to the cheers of thousands of other crazies who probably had at least pondered the possibility of jumping the fence themselves at some point during the win.

This chaotic Phillies club feeds off the crowd. And then, the chaotic crowd feeds off their Phillies. It’s less a baseball game than a rave, with the noise never halting, merely alternating between ear-splitting loudness and “I can’t hear myself think” levels — except at this event, the main substances being ingested are unfiltered positive vibes (OK, and a not-insignificant amount of beer).

And it’s all with the goal of singing a cover of an early 2010s queer anthem with 40,000 other lunatics when it’s all over.

Look, sports are weird. If the Phillies do defeat Arizona, maybe they’ll lose all of their home games in the World Series; they’ll have to face either a Rangers team that has yet to falter even once in these playoffs, or that same Astros club that solved the riddle of CBP last year. And as much as this NLCS appears to be all but over after the bludgeoning that was Game 2, it’s possible that Arizona goes back to their friendly confines and wins two out of three games to keep this series going. They could even win all three. Stranger things have happened in sports.

But even in that worst case scenario for the Phillies, the Diamondbacks would still have to return to Philadelphia and win one game at Citizens Bank Park — against a team and a fanbase that are as united as any in recent North American sports history.

Good luck with that.