Bryce Harper has a birthday bash, and the Phillies remind who’s the favorite in Game 1 win over D’backs

Until Monday night, Bryce Harper hadn’t ever played a game on his birthday. So, as he crossed home plate after bashing the first pitch of his first at-bat into the right-center field bleachers, he improvised a way to mark turning 31.

Raise three fingers on one hand. Hold up one finger on the other.

Then, blow out the candles.

“Sometimes I just do stuff,” Harper said later, “and that felt right.”

» READ MORE: How does Bryce Harper thrive under playoff pressure? He’s lived with it since he was 16.

Harper didn’t exactly turn out the lights on the Diamondbacks with his first-inning blast. Or with his third-inning RBI single, either. But as the Phillies claimed a 5-3 victory in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series, he did help remind everyone of why they are such heavy favorites to get back to the World Series.

Because Harper’s smash came on Arizona ace Zac Gallen’s fifth pitch. Kyle Schwarber smoked Gallen’s first pitch — 117.1 mph off the bat — into the right field seats. Nick Castellanos powered Gallen’s 23rd pitch out of the ballpark. Zack Wheeler leaned on his fastball to set down 15 consecutive batters at one point before Seranthony Domínguez and José Alvarado combined to throw 24 pitches at 97 mph or harder.

Power rules in the postseason. And the Phillies possess it in spades — on both sides of the ball.

“I felt like we were going to weather the storm, we were going to find ourselves in this ballgame at some point, [but] the deficit just became too large at [5-0],” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said. “They’ve got a very strong bullpen. We know that. But I think it was power stuff. It was just like, get up and go, here it comes.”

And then there was another raucous crowd — 45,396 strong — which fed off the Phillies. Or maybe it was the other way around. Regardless, from Wheeler’s first pitch through Jason Kelce’s chugging a beer on Phanavision and Tim McGraw’s joining the Phanatic on the field, Citizens Bank Park rocked. Again. As usual.

The Diamondbacks tried to brace themselves by pumping in artificial crowd noise at a workout in Arizona last week. But how do you prepare for this, especially after Schwarber’s leadoff homer caused the joint to practically erupt?

It’s sensory overload. Or, as Wheeler put it, “that first pitch, you can barely hear yourself think.”

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“You’re walking up to the plate and next thing you know 46,000 people are getting on their feet and ready to rock and roll,” Schwarber said. “Those are things I’m not going to forget ever whenever I’m done playing.”

Imagine how the Diamondbacks must’ve felt.

Lovullo called it an “ambush.” Indeed, a few Phillies relievers hadn’t sat down yet in the bullpen before Schwarber pounced. Left-hander Matt Strahm said he “barely got my Red Bull cracked.” The relievers play a game in which they throw down their hat to call a homer. Each pitcher gets one call per game, and Jeff Hoffman has bet on Schwarber since the postseason started.

“I feel like he’s my best odds,” Hoffman said.

But after hitting 47 homers in the regular season, Schwarber was 4-for-25 with 10 strikeouts in the first six playoff games. Hoffman figured he was due, so the righty plunked down his hat again just as Gallen threw a 92 mph fastball.

Bang.

“That’s such a tone-setter,” Hoffman said, “for him to go lead off a game and just punch somebody in the face.”

Said Harper: “Big swing right there, kind of gets the crowd going and gets us into it and gets the vibe going.”

It was also Schwarber’s hardest-hit ball since the 119 mph upper-decker last October in San Diego that practically touched down in Tijuana. That moonshot came in Game 1 of the 2022 NLCS. This time, he hit a missile to mark the latest in a string of eerie similarities between last year’s postseason run and this year’s.

Harper is authoring an impressive sequel, too. He has been the hottest hitter on the planet this month, which is saying something considering Castellanos joined Reggie Jackson as the only two players with five homers in a three-game span in the postseason.

Yet the Diamondbacks insisted on pitching to him with one out and the bases empty in the first inning. Harper hit Gallen’s fastball 420 feet.

“It wasn’t thinking about, ‘Hey, one pitch and not another pitch and just try to sit on this or sit on that,’” Harper said. “It was just trying to don’t miss the ones over the plate because when you get in deep into counts against him, [Gallen] is really tough to hit.”

» READ MORE: Phillies fans turned Citizens Bank Park into ‘four hours of hell.’ We measured just how loud that is.

Cue the faux birthday candles.

“I thought I would step on home plate and do that,” Harper said. “I just thought about it as I was running around third base that I would do it.”

Said Wheeler: “He’s always got something up his sleeve. He’s the Showman.”

Wheeler, meanwhile, allowed a broken-bat single to Corbin Carroll to open the game, then nothing else until Evan Longoria’s leadoff single in the sixth. The Diamondbacks sliced the margin to 5-2 with Geraldo Perdomo’s two-run homer off Wheeler in the sixth and added a run in the seventh.

But the Phillies seized the series opener because they overwhelmed the Diamondbacks with power bats, high-velocity fastballs, and a crowd that provides an unmatched home-field advantage.

And after Craig Kimbrel recorded the final out, two more postseason traditions followed: “Dancing on My Own,” the Phillies’ October anthem blared over the sound system, and owner John Middleton stood on the dugout and threw baseballs to lingering fans.

Game 2 is Tuesday night. Play it again.