Bryce Harper disagrees Citizens Bank Park can work against Phillies: ‘If they believe that, I don’t know what’s going through their head’

The talk after Monday’s Game 2, aside from the bunt heard ‘round the world, the ice-cold bats, the manager, the next game’s starter, the familiarity of this meltdown, was the fans.

Not the fans directly. But how the Phillies play in front of them, and what was said about them after a second straight home loss put them on the brink of not returning to those fans until March. 

Bryce Harper isn’t having it.

“I don’t feel that way,” Harper said a day later about whether it’s good to get away from Citizens Bank Park. “I mean, I love playing at the Bank. I love our fans. I boo myself when I get out.”

The question to Harper on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium, where the Phillies are more likely than not to see their season end this week, was, at least in part, indirectly, about Nick Castellanos. He talked Monday night about the disadvantages of home-field advantage:

“When the game is not going good, it’s wind in our face. The environment can be with us, and the environment can be against us,” he told reporters, including The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Murphy. “If we run into adversity and the tide shifts … now we’re playing more tight because we don’t want to be reprimanded for something bad.”

It was probably the wrong thing to say publicly and the wrong time to do so, but the Phillies have certainly played like it’s true. That would include Harper, who is 1-for-7 in this NLDS with three strikeouts, one of which was the second out of the sixth inning in Game 2 with runners on first and second. Another out ended the eighth with a runner on, down three. 

He’s 3-for-19 at Citizens Bank Park since the flight from Phoenix to Philadelphia during the 2023 NLCS. His heroics at the stadium before those ill-fated Diamondbacks games — Harper hit .347/.449/.773, including five doubles, 13 walks and nine homers in his first 21 home playoff games as a Phillie — have not shielded him from the sounds justifiably hurled at nearly every member of the local nine across the first two games of this series. Nor should they have.

Those sounds, of course, are boos. Lots of boos. Boos that were fewer and further between when Citizens Bank Park routinely welcomed its guests to a beautiful dichotomy: chilled October air and four hours of hell. 

Boos whose recipients can choose to perceive them as the sharper edge of a double-edged sword.

“[The fans] spend their hard, hard-earned dollar to come watch us play. They expect greatness out of us and I expect greatness out of myself and my teammates as well,” Harper said. “So if they believe that, then I don’t know what’s going through their head, their mindset. We’ve got some of the best fans in baseball.”