PHILADELPHIA _ Bryce Harper made history with his first home run for the Phillies.
Batting in the seventh inning Saturday, Harper crushed a fastball from Atlanta Braves reliever Jesse Biddle into the second deck in right-center field at Citizens Bank Park. It was the Phillies' sixth homer in two games this season. No Phillies team had ever hit more than five.
Harper's solo shot, which traveled an estimated 465 feet, punctuated the Phillies' 8-6 victory, the first time since 2011 that they opened a season with consecutive wins.
But Harper also sent the sellout crowd of 44,597 into hysterics.
After returning to the dugout, the Phillies' new superstar indulged the fans in a curtain call, pumping his fists and screaming into the air in a scene reminiscent of his visceral reaction to winning the home-run derby last summer in Washington as a member of the Nationals. Harper ran out to right field for the eighth inning to chants of "M-V-P!"
It was also Harper's first hit as a member of the Phillies. He went 0 for 3 with a walk on Opening Day and was 0 for 2 with a walk until he went deep against Biddle, a former Phillies first-round pick.
For the sake of posterity, Harper's homer gave the Phillies a 7-4 lead. It recorded an exit velocity of 114 mph, according to Statcast. It was also the second-longest homer by a Phillies player _ and by Harper, too _ since Statcast began tracking data in 2016.
J.T. Realmuto, whose arrival in an early February trade with the Marlins was an equally critical move in the club's transformative offseason, also notched his first Phillies homer _ and it was an even more timely swing than Harper's. Realmuto broke a 4-4 tie in the fifth inning when he followed Rhys Hoskins' two-out walk with a two-run homer to left-center field.
The Braves closed the gap in the ninth inning when Charlie Culberson hit a two-run homer against reliever David Robertson, who gave up a two-out double against the shift to Freddie Freeman to bring dangerous Ronald Acuna Jr. to the plate as the tying run. But Robertson got Acuna to fly out to right field to end the game.
The Phillies trailed 1-0 after the first inning and 3-1 after the second. Franco's two-run homer, with pinch-hitter Nick Williams waiting on deck, gave the Phillies a 4-3 lead and enabled starter Nick Pivetta to stay in the game. But Pivetta gave up the tying run in the top of the fifth on Freeman's RBI single.
Andrew McCutchen, Maikel Franco and Hoskins homered for the Phillies in the season opener. Franco, Realmuto and Harper went deep through seven innings of the second game, eclipsing the 1951 Phillies' mark of five homers through a season's first two games.
Harper signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies on March 2 after starring with the Nationals for seven seasons. He makes his return to Washington on Tuesday night, but not before giving Phillies fans a swing to remember.
