West Chester’s Chas McCormick breaks Phillies hearts, calls it ‘best feeling ever’

Sprawled on the warning track, baseball nestled in his glove, Astros center fielder Chas McCormick said he looked up into the stands at Citizens Bank Park, saw all these contorted faces of pain.

“They were upset,” McCormick said of all the Phillies fans looming over him. “They were really upset.”

It all felt “like a dream,” McCormick said, that he couldn’t help flashing back to a 14-year-old in West Chester watching the Phillies lose the 2009 World Series.

What’s it like breaking the heart of the team you grew up rooting for? McCormick couldn’t lie.

“Best feeling ever, just laying there,” McCormick said of helping clinch a 3-2 victory to put the Astros up 3 games to 2 as the Series moves back to Houston for Saturday’s Game 6.

All that pain McCormick saw, he’d caused it. The defensive gem of this 2022 World Series belongs to a West Chester Henderson High graduate who had zero Division I offers out of high school, went to Millersville University, got drafted by the Astros in the 21st round, had been a playoff hero for the Astros but hadn’t done much to get noticed before the ninth inning of Game 5.

Until J.T. Realmuto got to the plate, Astros clinging to that one-run lead, one out in the ninth.

“I was kind of shifted over to right-center – he likes to hit the ball the other way,” McCormick said. “He put a really good swing on it, good backspin.”

Really good.

“Honestly, I thought he hit it out,” said McCormick, who’d been a little mad at himself for not being more aggressive on a play earlier in the game. This time – “I was going to run through a wall and catch it.”

Didn’t have to run through it, just into it, leaping and reaching the wall at the same instant the baseball got there. McCormick kind of bounced off the fence as the ball settled in his glove.

“The fence is pretty flexible,” McCormick said. “It didn’t really hurt that much. I just ran right into it, jumped as high as I could.”

Knew he had it.

“Right in my pocket,” McCormick said.

As McCormick lay on the warning track, glove hand up in the air, many of the 45,693 still wondered … Had he caught it?

“It feels good,” McCormick said of that part of it. “I have the ball. I’m in control. It didn’t go over the wall. Just how quiet the stadium was.”

“Incredible – I thought it was a home run or off the wall,” said Astros first baseman Trey Mancini, who had made a lesser defensive gem of his own an inning before to deny the Phillies tying run when Kyle Schwarber had ripped a two-out shot down the line – Mancini “just tackled it, basically.”

In Section 127, a couple of folks wearing replica McCormick jerseys tracked that Realmuto ball before it met its fate.

“My heart was in my throat,” Bob McCormick said an hour later, stuck in postgame traffic.

Then his son was on the ground.

“There was disbelief,” Bob McCormick said. “Philly fans were in disbelief.”

Astros fans were in disbelief …

“Just crazy,” the father said. “The two reactions, from the different sides.”

The parents still live in West Chester. Sure, they’d heard some things at Phillies games since their son made it to the big leagues, wearing their Astros gear.

“Hey, I’m from here,” Nancy McCormick said of how she’s usually talked Phillies fans down, most thinking it was pretty cool when she explained where their son was from.

Even on this night, Bob McCormick said, walking out to the car, wearing a McCormick No. 20 jersey, “Probably 20 people came up, said, ‘We hope you lose the Series, but your son made a great play.’ Typical Philly.”

McCormick kept having a different thought. His son had homered twice against the Yankees in the American League Championship Series sweep. Nothing like that yet.

“Probably this whole game, maybe the whole Series, every time he came to the plate, ‘OK, Chas, have a World Series moment.”

Yeah, this counts.

“He had a moment that will last a long time,” McCormick said.

This will live in World Series history. Chas had just turned 11 when Phillies center fielder Aaron Rowand ran face-first into the centerfield wall making a catch in 2006.

“That catch he made will never leave my head,” McCormick said. “I remember watching it live on TV – it was amazing. I was trying to be like Aaron Rowand out there.”

Except this was no random game in May. This was the kind of play that decides a World Series.

“I’m still a little numb,” his father said, out in the parking lot traffic jam.

“I’m speechless,” said Chas, the front of his locker a gridlock scene of its own, full of microphones and cameras.