Red October turns blue for Phillies fans at Citizens Bank Park

After the Phils’ bullpen imploded in the eighth inning, and the bitter rivals from New York took a 5-1 lead, a whole lot of energy left Citizens Bank Park, along with a whole lot of fans.

But Angela Hoolick, a fan from Wilkes-Barre, stayed put, and even though she was decidedly deflated after the Phils’ lead vanished, she had the energy to offer an appropriate metaphor: “It’s like the end of the party and someone knocked the cake off the table before you got to sing ‘Happy Birthday,’” said Hoolick.

“If it happened earlier, we could have run to the bakery and gotten another cake.”

This was not the party ending that fans had anticipated.

Linda Slaughter (”as in kill, like kill the Mets”) is a Phillies diehard, and she had made it her personal mission to bring the vibes for Game 1 of the Phillies’ National League Division Series against the Mets.

So naturally, she left her home in the Northeast early, and was in line to get into her usual tailgating parking lot seven hours before Zack Wheeler threw his first pitch. Slaughter, 71, gathered with family and friends to set the tone early.

“Mets fans, they always come in like they own the place,” Slaughter’s friend Liz Paul, 48, said disapprovingly.

“Absolutely rude,” said Slaughter. “But we’re here to silence them.”

As turned out, it was the Mets’ bats in the eighth inning that silenced Phillies fans, who watched their greatly anticipated Red October turn a disheartening shade of blue in a 6-2 defeat.

For seven innings, the fans and Wheeler brought the energy. If it was Wheeler’s job to throw strikes and the offense’s job to ignite early and often, Phillies fans on Saturday felt it was their solemn duty to bring the sort of October energy that strikes fear into opposing teams’ hearts. They did what they could.

With just the introduction of the Phillies lineup, the crowd noise reached the officially “dangerous” level of 106 decibels.

Then, not surprisingly, when Kyle Schwarber led off the Phillies’ first inning with a signature “Schwarbomb,” the Bank exploded, and one Michael Neill, 28, ended up with the souvenir of a baseball fan’s lifetime. Before the game, the South Philly electrician told family and friends, “I hope Schwarber hits one to my hand.”

That’s not exactly what happened, but close enough. The second-deck shot bounced off the hand of and landed in front of Neill’s feet, a sequence he saw as a harbinger. The Phillies “are going to win,” he said. “Big.”

And while the pitchers were doing an excellent job of quieting the bats, the crowd was anything but quiet. When Wheeler struck out Francisco Alvarez to end the Mets half of the fifth inning, the decibel level shot up to 105.

Phillies fans, who have been known to boo their own, appeared to be reserving their negative energy for the Mets and their faithful, such as Lisa and John DeHoyos of Staten Island. They arrived at the stadium complex in South Philadelphia around 11 a.m. and after a few hours of peaceful tailgating, they entered the jaws of Citizens Bank Park.

”The tension was very high,” said Lisa DeHoyos, 36, wearing a Brandon Nimmo jersey. “We were booed since we walked in.” She said it became tense when she was in line to to buy a burger and a pretzel. A woman in Phillies gear began screaming boos in her face, “wagging her finger. I felt verbally assaulted,” she said.

Armond McCloud, a lifelong Mets fan, came to intimidate. He wore an orange Mike Piazza jersey, blue wig, blue feather boa, blue mask. McCloud, who didn’t want to give too many particulars about himself — “I’m from somewhere in South Jersey” — was subjected to a constant stream of heckling.

“Boo!” was the most common. “Nerd!” another person shouted, getting close to McCloud’s face.

Among the faithful: Katherine Millard, 80, and Maria Wilk, 73, sisters from Deptford who tell everyone they meet that they were once nicknamed “The Shot Sisters” by Shane Victorino. While they took a dim view of Mets fans, they said they weren’t rattled by the smattering of orange and blue they saw in the stands.

The Shot Sisters watched the Phillies in 1980 and 2008, in 2022 and 2023. And they felt as good as they ever have about the team’s chances this year.

“The guys, they’re all so friendly with each other and nice to each other, and that makes a big difference,” said Millard.

“But they have to hit,” said Wilk.

They didn’t, except for Kyle Schwarber.

Still, not even the painful ending of Game 1 could shake the mettle of Angela Hoolick, 59, or her son Ethan, 30.”

“Still worth it,” said Angela Hoolick. “We’ll get them next time.”