MLB 2024 Playoffs: Why Bryce Harper is built to rule October - ESPN

PHILADELPHIA — Inside Bryce Harper's basement on a recent Saturday morning, his son wanted dad to watch his Hot Wheels races, and his daughter was hungry and needed a bagel, and the baby had just unleashed a volcanic spit-up on him for the second time in five minutes, and amid the chaos, the calls for his attention, the tugs in every direction, Harper exuded calm. Considering the environment in which Harper plies his trade — 40,000 people bleating, praying and exhorting him to carry the Philadelphia Phillies back to Major League Baseball's mountaintop — the smaller audience posed no problem.

Harper swiped the regurgitation off his hoodie, snagged a plate full of breakfast, cheered for the orange car with the racing stripe and, when those duties were completed, sank into the couch and trained his eyes on the TV broadcasting «College GameDay.» He's a die-hard college football fan — a logo for Ohio State, where his wife, Kayla, played soccer, adorned his sweatshirt — and its return, as much as the leaves changing colors, signaled to Harper a new season and the arrival of his favorite month.

«I love October,» Harper said. It's football and Halloween and his birthday, yes, but they're all secondary to him getting another crack at fulfilling his purpose. That's how Harper sees it at least. Everything he is — someone ripe to be chewed up and spit out by the machine that makes sports stars but instead met the hype — prepares him for October, equips him with the intellectual and emotional and spiritual tools to match the physical capabilities that were never in question.

All of it converges again Saturday, when the Phillies host the New York Mets in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park. It will mark