ST. LOUIS -- The back of Jean Segura's bubble gum card shows 1,328 big-league games.
No active player had gone longer without playing in a postseason game.
So, when Segura woke up Friday morning knowing he was about to boldly go where he'd never gone before ...
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"I was ready," he said. "I woke up at 7 a.m. with adrenaline in my body. I was mentally focused on every play, every pitch. I was prepared."
In his first postseason game ever -- and the franchise's first in exactly 11 years -- Segura keyed an amazing ninth-inning flurry as the Phillies rallied for six runs to grab Game 1 of the best-of-three National League wild-card series from the St. Louis Cardinals in front of a stunned crowd of 45,911 at Busch Stadium.
The final score was 6-3.
The Phillies were two outs from absorbing a 2-0 loss when Cardinals All-Star closer Ryan Helsley suddenly lost his ability to throw strikes in the top of the ninth. His meltdown, caused by numbness in his right middle finger, which he had jammed earlier in the week, fueled the Phillies' win and put them in position to win the series with Aaron Nola on the mound Saturday night.
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After the dramatic win, Phillies manager Rob Thomson was asked if he felt like his team stole one from the Cardinals.
"Well, yeah," he said. "But I thought we played well. We didn't hit early, but in that ninth inning, we really got going. These guys are resilient. They just hung in there. It was a great ballgame and we just kept fighting."
The Phils received an excellent start from veteran Zack Wheeler, who, like Segura, was playing in his first postseason game. The right-hander pitched 6⅓ scoreless innings and handed off to Jose Alvarado in the seventh. Alvarado, who had been brilliant since mid-June, issued a two-out walk and gave up a pinch-hit two-run homer to Juan Yepez as the Cardinals went up 2-0.
The Phillies' offense did nothing against Cardinals starter Jose Quintana and the prospects of rallying against Helsley did not look good as he came on and got the final two outs of the eighth with his triple-digit stuff.
Entering the ninth, the Phillies had just two hits on the day. Helsley struck out Rhys Hoskins for the first out then allowed a base hit to J.T. Realmuto.
That was just the start of the meltdown.
Bryce Harper came to the plate. Helsley got ahead, 1-2, with a 102-mph fastball, then threw three straight balls to walk Harper.
He then walked Nick Castellanos on five pitches to load the bases.
Busch Stadium became silent. Everywhere except the Phillies' dugout.
"It was electric," Thomson said. "Electric."
"Pass the baton, don't try to do too much, take what the game gives you," Castellanos said to himself as he reached first base with Alec Bohm due up.
Helsley's meltdown intensified. He hit Bohm in the left shoulder with a 100.8-mph fastball to bring home a run.
Some hitters go down when they're hit by a triple-digit fastball.
Bohm clapped.
Helsley exited with an injury and right-hander Andre Pallante came in to face Segura. His assignment: roll a game-ending double play.
Pallante got his ground ball, but Segura got enough of the 2-2 slider to push it through the infield, which was playing halfway to either cut the run or get a double play, and into right field to score the tying and go-ahead runs. Before the shocking inning was over, the Phils scored three more runs, one on an excellent baserunning play by Edmundo Sosa, who pinch-ran for Bohm, one on a single by Brandon Marsh and one on a sacrifice fly by Kyle Schwarber.
David Robertson's scoreless inning in the eighth was huge. He kept it close and got the win. Zach Eflin allowed a run in the bottom of the ninth, but that was it.
The Phillies stole one.
Or the Cardinals gave them one.
Eleven years to the day after the franchise's painful 1-0 elimination loss to the Cardinals in Game 5 of the 2011 NL Division Series -- remember how that 102-win season ended with Ryan Howard writhing in pain on the ground? -- the Phillies were thrilled to take this one.
"That's winning baseball," Harper said. "The grind of at-bats. Taking pitches. Each guy going up there having a plan and a mentality of what they want to do. J.T. gets a hit, I get the walk, another walk, a hit by pitch. It just snowballed. Each guy just did their job and passed the baton.
"And what an at-bat by Jean. Huge at-bat."
"There was nobody we'd rather have up at the plate there," Bohm said. "Jean's a hit machine."
Segura has 1,479 career hits in the regular season and one very big one in the postseason.
"I just do my best knowing where my strength as a baseball player is," he said. "Put the ball in play, big things happen."
A big thing did happen. The Phillies, back in the postseason for the first time in 11 years, are one win from advancing to the second round.
"Before the game in the batting cage I was saying, 'We're not losing this game,'" Harper said. "That was the mentality. I swear. I was saying it all morning. We're not losing today. It's just not going to happen. We're not going to lose this series. We're not going to lose this game. That's the mentality that we have. We want to go out there and win. Whatever that takes, we're going to play 27 outs. It doesn't matter how long you lead in a game as long as you have the lead at the end.
"Yeah, we were all talking about it. You have to speak it into existence, right?"
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