LOS ANGELES -- It didn't last long, but for a minute or two Wednesday afternoon, Rob Thomson had his entire roster's attention inside the snug visitors clubhouse at Dodger Stadium. "It wasn't," Trea Turner said, "a 'Rocky' speech by any means." The Phillies did not need that as they gathered for what could have been the end of an era. Everyone knows this will require something akin to a miracle.
Before a convincing 8-2 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 3 of this National League Division Series to extend the season by another day, Thomson urged his players not to think about the enormity of it all. He left them with an idea.
"Don't try harder," the Phillies manager said. "Trust harder."
It resonated. "When the leader of your team is as chill as he is, it just trickles down to the players and the coaches and everybody," Bryson Stott said. "That was good." Sometimes, Turner said, it just takes someone else saying something they all know. It's one thing to talk. It's another to do it.
"It was really good," Bryce Harper said. "We've got to trust everybody to do their job, right? Whoever it is, we have to trust everybody to do their job. I thought it was a great quote."
What mattered most was the 2 hours and 54 minutes that followed. They trusted the style that has fueled past October successes. The Phillies were the aggressors again.
Thomson managed with force, employing an audacious pitching plan that called for starting a man who had the highest ERA for any starter in a postseason game in 19 years and treating him as a two-inning opener. It worked. It allowed the Phillies to avoid potential sticky situations in the middle innings. Thomson's hitters stuck to a plan. They were opportunistic on the bases. They dictated the tone.
For one night, they conjured that October magic again. Affirmation of that trust arrived in the fourth inning. Kyle Schwarber took a mighty swing and launched a baseball deep into the night to tie the game. It felt like more than one run.
"It was just a weight lifted off our shoulders," catcher J.T. Realmuto said. "We were able to just play our game from there on."
"It's ridiculous how far that ball went," Turner said. "But I just think like the vibes, the energy, it's something to build off. Sometimes it's hard to create your own momentum. No better way than the ball leaving the stadium."
As they pounded Schwarber on the head, Harper cracked an opposite-field single to advance the rally. Inside the dugout, they could feel all 455 feet of Schwarber's home run.
"Everyone was just in awe," outfielder Max Kepler said. "It felt like a revelation at the same time."
So, it's a series. There will be a Game 4 with Cristopher Sánchez, the Phillies' best, against Tyler Glasnow. The Phillies have the pitching advantage; the Dodgers still will be favored. There is so much more to do. But the Phillies are nine more innings from sending this series back to Citizens Bank Park.
The first step is complete.
"I don't think anybody's feeling like it's our time to go home," Turner said. "We want to keep playing. So we're going to have to do it again tomorrow. And today was a good start."
The Phillies' six-run margin of victory was their largest in a postseason game in which they faced elimination, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. It was their first win, period, in a potential elimination game since Game 5 of the 2010 National League Championship Series.
The way they did it -- five insurance runs in the eighth inning against future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw -- was not insignificant. It kept Thomson from going to his closer, Jhoan Duran, for a six-out save. Duran wasn't needed at all. He warmed up in the bullpen, but he will be fresh for Game 4.
"They're an experienced group of guys," Thomson said. "They've been through this a little bit. One thing they did, I think, is they stayed in the moment. Stayed relaxed. If you stay in the moment, trust the process, trust your teammates and not really focus on the result, you have a better chance of getting to the result. And they did that. So I'm happy with them."
Schwarber epitomized that. He was 0-for-7 with five strikeouts and a walk in the first two games of this series. He had missed pitches in the strike zone to hit. He was trying too hard. He felt a twinge of that during the final week of the regular season and, ever since, he has tried to swing his way out of it.
He even swung at the first pitch of his first at-bat Wednesday night and rolled a weak grounder to Freddie Freeman at first base. But Schwarber took the first two pitches Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw him in the fourth inning for balls. He was in a great spot. Yamamoto threw him a 96 mph heater down the middle.
Schwarber hit it so far that it cleared the bleachers in right field. It was the emphatic statement the Phillies have craved.
"I didn't even see where it landed," Schwarber said. "I was looking in the dugout trying to get the guys going. Get back in the dugout, everyone is high-fiving. And I knew I hit it good. I didn’t know where it went. Eventually, somebody tells me. You watch it on video to see where it goes.
"I was just more focused on our guys there. I don’t care. It could go in the first row; it could hit the freakin’ -- that board right there. I don’t care. But hits are great; homers are great; walks are great. Anything positive for our offense is going to be great. But, yeah, it was a cool moment."
Then, Harper went from first to third on an Alec Bohm single, forcing Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages to make a throw. It skipped into the dugout, scoring Harper and advancing Bohm to third. Brandon Marsh hit a sacrifice fly, giving the Phillies a two-run lead. They left the bases loaded in the fifth, stranded another runner in the sixth and two more in the seventh. Schwarber was picked off in that inning. They missed chances.
But Realmuto homered off Kershaw to begin the eighth. The Phillies rallied. Schwarber capped it with his second homer of the night. Duran could rest.
The Phillies are now 15-0 in their last 15 postseason games when they hit at least two homers. They did not hit a single one in the first two games. They needed to see one go over the wall.
They had to trust it would happen. Before Thomson delivered his message to the players, he practiced it in his office.
"Instead of trying harder, you trust harder in this situation," Thomson said to a small group of reporters."You trust that your teammates are going to get it done, so you pass the baton."
Schwarber passed it in his way in the fourth inning with one prodigious swing that awakened these Phillies. They are still alive.