“Talk the Crap”: Bryce Harper Has Only One Request to Phillies’ Fans as Playoffs Approach

The Philadelphia Phillies are currently at the top of the Wild Card standings, and the veteran understands how big a weapon their home-field advantage can be. So, yes, it makes sense why he would demand a certain thing from the fans.

“We expect our crowds to be loud. And crazy, and obnoxious, and talk the crap that they do to other players. And all that kind of stuff, so I think it plays a huge part,” Harper said when the reporters asked him how important home-field advantage is. 

“We wanna play at home. We obviously wanna be here and play in front of our fans, sleep in our own bed, have the opportunity to play at our ballpark. It’s a huge advantage in the postseason, I know it is.”

The crowd at Citizens Bank Park is notorious for being loud, hostile, and unforgiving towards visiting teams. The way they target the opposition players with boos often makes them nervous. The most recent example was the 2026 Home Run Derby. 43,863 fans loudly cheered for every single home run hit by Harper or Kyle Schwarber, but the boos were even louder when the hit was from a non-Phillies player. 

Jordan Walker, the St. Louis Cardinals outfielder, ultimately beat Schwarber in the final round to clinch the title, but he admitted that he felt nervous. The 24-year-old said, “Everybody was booing me like crazy.”

This is exactly the kind of atmosphere Harper wants, with the crowd at full volume as he hopes to secure more games in the postseason.

Philadelphia is currently second in the NL East with an 82-65 record. They are 4.0 games behind the Atlanta Braves, who sit atop the division. Harper said that they are trying to beat both the Braves and the Chicago Cubs, who are just 1.0 game behind the Phillies. The Phillies are currently the No. 4 seed, and even if they dethrone the Braves over the remaining 15 games, they would only move up to the No. 3 seed. 

Either way, they will play the Wild Card Series, and they will have home-field advantage, but the question is whether it can really help as much as the 9x All-Star hopes. 

In 2025, they were the second-seeded team and lost the National League Division Series (3-1) to the Los Angeles Dodgers. A year before that, they had the same position and suffered the same fate against the New York Mets. In comparison, they reached the World Series in 2022 when they qualified for the postseason as the No. 6 seed. 

Fast-forward to their recent games, and the Phillies don’t have the best record at home. They just completed a seven-game homestand, splitting the four-game series against the Braves before dropping the series 1-2 to the Houston Astros.

The cheering from the home fans and the comfort of sleeping in your own bed are indeed huge advantages, but they can’t score runs on the field for the team.

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