PHILADELPHIA — In the five years of Bryce Harper’s tenure in Philadelphia, he’s been visibly angry after a loss two times.

Game 6 of the 2022 World Series. Game 7 of the 2023 National League Championship Series.

The Phillies’ season ended in each of those games. His teammates? Some were philosophical. Some were sad. Some, embarrassed. Some were wistful, especially the underdog squad in 2022, whose postseason run as a wild-card team shocked the baseball world.

After the World Series loss, a dozen or so Phillies gathered in the corner of the visitors’ clubhouse at Houston’s Minute Maid Park, where they shared beers and memories in various states of undress. Harper, fully clothed, held a long, terse press conference near the clubhouse exit, and was gone.

After the NLCS loss last year, Phillies stars walked around in a daze, lamenting the loss they’d suffered in a seven-game heartbreaker. Harper gave a long, terse press conference, seething at the upset.

Both times he was as furious as any preadolescent fan ... or any typical Phillies fan.

“I’m still that same 11-, 12-year-old kid,” he admitted this spring, laughing at the memory. It was a rueful laugh.

Between the Phillies’ postseason runs, two-time MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo, who won the 2021 NBA title with Milwaukee, said, after the eighth-seeded Heat beat the top-seeded Bucks in the first round of the 2023 playoffs, a playoff team not winning in the postseason did not equate to failure.

Said Giannis:

“Michael Jordan played 15 years, won six championships; the other nine years was a failure? That’s what you’re telling me?”

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