PHILADELPHIA — Go, young grasshoppers, gather 'round your Uncle Nick. He has a story to tell. Listen up close and you might learn a thing or two.

Your game is impressive. He'll tell you that, I'm sure. Wouldn't surprise me at all if, during the mayhem of Game 2, he caught himself smiling wistfully as you again punched your way out of the grave. Real recognizes real. Game recognizes game.

But here's the thing you need to know about your ol' Uncle Nick. Listen up close.

He invented this stuff.

Nobody rises from the dead like Nick Castellanos. At least, nobody has done it in the last 2,000-plus years.

Forget about adding another chapter to the Phillies postseason legacy. Game 2 of the NLDS would require multiple volumes to fully capture what went down, what it meant, and what it might signal for the future. At the moment, we only have room for 1,000 or so words. It will take half that many just to know where to start.

Do you start with the end? With that familiar end? With that geyser of cream-and-red jerseys cascading out of the dugout, Castellanos' game-winning, series-turning, walk-off single still rolling to a stop off the left-field wall? With the score changing and then turning final, 7-6 Phillies, this best-of-five NLDS now knotted at 1?

Do you start five minutes earlier, in the top of the ninth, with Castellanos charging and sliding and scooping the final out to preserve a tie game and earn himself another chance?

Do you start five minutes before that? With Castellanos' game-turning single in the bottom of the eighth? With him moving the tying run to third, setting up a triple from Bryson Stott that gave the Phillies a lead that lasted for less than a half-inning? Do you start with the moment Castellanos touched the plate with that first fleeting go-ahead run?

Do you start two innings before that? With the game-tying home run he hit in the sixth?

All are appropriate jumping-off points. But none as fitting as this. Two innings before the go-ahead run. With Castellanos swinging at two straight sliders below the zone, each of them accompanied by boos, followed by a sarcastic cheer when Castellanos did not swing at another slider that bounced before the plate. The boos returned when he swung at the next one, also low, sending a soft groundout rolling toward short.

It was here where it started to feel like the 2024 season might really be lost. Game 2 felt a lot like Game 1, a series of fruitless at-bats ticking toward an inevitable conclusion. They were like a driverless car left in gear, idling toward the edge of a cliff. They were playing with more spirit, more gumption, more energy than they had in Game 1. Yet the results were the same. They were facing an eminently hittable pitcher in Luis Severino. But they were not hitting. By the time the bottom of the sixth arrived, they had scored a total of two runs in 15 innings against the Mets, none of them in Game 2. The boos grew louder and more frequent, broken up only by a roar from the pockets of Mets fans who'd wormed their way into Citizens Bank Park.

Inevitability. That's what it felt like. Not just the end of an inning or a game or a series but the end of an era. They would be down 2-0, and they would leave home base for the last time, and when they returned they would need to look different. Four straight postseason games they had not hit, dating back to their NLCS collapse in Games 6 and 7 last October. Something would need to change. Perhaps even Castellanos himself.

And then it happened, the thing that always seems to happen with the Phillies this time of year. The thing that has happened with the Mets throughout their run through September and into this early part of the postseason. For much of this series, it has felt like a mantle had been passed. Zack Wheeler could not kill them in Game 1. Castellanos couldn't do it with his game-tying home run in the sixth inning of Game 2. He couldn't do it after the Mets retook the lead in the top of the seventh. The Phillies emerged from the bottom of the eighth with a 6-4 lead. Mark Vientos wiped it out with a two-run home run in the top of the ninth.

But you can't hack the guy who wrote the original code. Two outs in the bottom of the ninth, game tied at 6. Trea Turner walks. Bryce Harper walks. Castellanos steps to the plate. He swings through a cutter — of course he does. He fouls off a sinker. And then he does what he does: laces a no-doubt-about single that pounds the grass in left.

The Mets aren't dead yet. But, somehow, the Phillies are alive.

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