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Bryce Harper is finally over the NLDS hump

Bryce Harper will make his NLCS debut on Tuesday. (Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire)

Bryce Harper is one of few Philadelphia Phillies who came into this postseason with previous playoff experience. A Washington National for seven years to open his career, Harper had played in four postseasons before, more than all but a handful of players on the Phillies’ 2022 roster.

But now, Harper is in the same boat as most of his teammates when it comes to prior NLCS experience — in that he’ll carry into Tuesday a blank slate.

After four NLDS exits in those four postseason experiences with Washington, Harper is finally over the hump in his first playoff appearance with the Phillies, advancing to the NLCS for the first time in his 11-year career.

“I think as an organization, right, we haven’t been here for a long time,” Harper redirected the conversation when Phillies Nation’s Tim Kelly asked him after Game 4 about making his first NLCS. “And to be able to do this and do it with the group of guys that we have, and kind of where we started and now where we’re at, I don’t think any of us are shocked about where we are.”

OK, back to Harper. Crediting the team is on brand for the reigning National League MVP, but along with the series-long contributions across the roster, his first career NLDS win came in large part because it was the best postseason series of his career. He went 8-for-16 with two homers and three doubles, good for an absurd 1.063 slugging percentage. (It was even better than Harper’s 2014 NLDS, when he went 5-for-17 with three homers and a double only for his Nationals to lose in four games.)

His two-run homer in Game 3, in particular, which followed Rhys Hoskins’ deafening three-run homer and ballooned the lead from four to six, is the kind of moment many Phillies fans envisioned on March 1, 2019 — the day Harper signed his 13-year megadeal with the Phillies:

Tuesday’s Game 1 against the San Diego Padres will serve as not just Harper’s first NLCS game, but also his first game of any variety in his thirties: The reigning MVP celebrated his 30th birthday Sunday, the day after the Phillies completed their NLDS upset of the Braves. Couple that with the deepest postseason run of his career so far, and 2022 will be the first calendar year that sees Harper play a Major League game after his birthday.

Cool. Harper, of course, knows that there are no parades for NLCS appearances or post-birthday baseball. He acknowledged that the goal is loftier. But he also knows that the ultimate goal — a parade down Broad Street — doesn’t happen if he can’t clear that elusive first hurdle, even if he’s unwilling to frame it as his hurdle to cross.

“I think that’s always been the goal. To get to where we are right now, but to get even further than that,” Harper said. “This is Step 2 in what we’ve been through. Step 1 being the Wild Card; this being Step 2. And then we’ve got two more.”