Bryson Stott’s grand slam gave Shane Victorino chills as he watched with his youth baseball team

Shane Victorino was at a baseball field in Las Vegas on Wednesday night, running his son’s youth team through another practice while streaming the Phillies on his phone. Fifteen years ago, the youth baseball coach made Citizens Bank Park come unglued with a grand slam. And now he was watching it happen all over again in the palm of his hand.

“I was just telling the kids that it brings me chills,” said Victorino, whose slam off CC Sabathia in 2008 was the only postseason grand slam in Phillies history until Bryson Stott’s slam punctuated Wednesday’s wild-card clincher against Miami. “A lot of these kids don’t know. They’re 10, they’re 12. They never saw me play. So I said, ‘Go look at all the stuff you guys see on social media and look at what it says about who was the first.’ It was cool to see their reaction. I just said, ‘Look at what it says.’ And they said ‘Oh, Coach. It’s you.’ Coach was good at one point in his life.”

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Victorino said his phone started buzzing as soon as Stott’s homer landed in the sixth inning of a 7-1 win. It seemed like everyone had something to say. For Victorino, he struggles to even remember the moment. He’ll never forget how loud the ballpark was, but it was such a rush and everything happened so fast. It’s all a blur.

“I was on cloud nine,” Victorino said. “That’s all I can remember. Whatever Bryson is feeling at the moment, that’s probably how I felt.”

Stott probably feels the same way. He spiked his bat on his way to first base but doesn’t remember doing it. Like Victorino, his slam became a blur.

“I don’t really have much memory of the swing and stuff like that,” Stott said. “I know I yelled at the dugout and couldn’t really hear myself. So I knew the crowd was loud. Any time we get to play here, you know it’s going to be loud from the very first pitch.

“I wouldn’t want to play anywhere else. It’s a phenomenal time every time we take the field here in the postseason. Just being able to do this at home was really cool.”

Stott ended the regular season with just one homer in his final 103 at-bats as his slugging percentage dropped 27 points in September. He needed a swing like that.

“He’d been struggling a little bit,” manager Rob Thomson said. “But to get the ball in the air, because he hadn’t hit a home run in a while, I think it was big for him. The ovation he got, his next at-bat was spectacular.”

The moment in 2008 was special for Victorino because his parents flew in a day earlier from Hawaii, allowing his family to be among the rally towel-waving crazies when his homer landed. The Phillies became world champions three weeks later, but many point to that swing as the moment when October started to feel special. Not Victorino.

“I never had that feeling,” Victorino said. “Even with the two World Series that I won, I know that as fast as your thought is there, it can flip. I never thought about it that way. I know Brad Lidge has said that ‘When Shane hit that grand slam, I knew we were destined to win.’ But I never, ever knew that that was the moment.”

The Phillies were in control on Wednesday before Stott’s homer turned a likely win into a rout, sending them into the NLDS on Saturday in Atlanta. Fifteen years ago, Victorino’s slam brought a sense of relief. The Phillies won the opener of the 2008 NLDS against Milwaukee, but Game 2 provided the real test. The Brewers charged into the postseason, and Sabathia was dominant.

And then Brett Myers fouled off four pitches, each one whipping the crowd into a frenzy before the pitcher walked on 10 pitches. The task suddenly didn’t feel as imposing.

“I always say there’s a tale before the story,” Victorino said. “There’s always something that happens before that storybook moment. I go back to Stairs’ big homer. I hit the tying homer two at-bats before, and it all gets forgotten because the storybook moment overshadows it. But there’s so much that happens prior to that and makes the situation.”

Jimmy Rollins, the next batter, walked to load the bases. And then Victorino’s grand slam sailed over the left-field wall, rocking Citizens Bank Park the same way Stott did on Wednesday.

“Now they get to go home and say ‘Oh my God. My coach was the one who did this,’” Victorino said.

The Flyin’ Hawaiians — Victorino’s youth squad — was practicing Wednesday night just 30 minutes from where Stott went to high school. Yes, their coach once hit a postseason grand slam. But Victorino reminded them that the player who homered on their coach’s phone was a Las Vegas kid just like them.

“It’s great to be around these kids and watch them put two and two together,” Victorino said. “This kid was born and raised in Vegas. He went to high school here, he went to UNLV, he was a first-round pick. A Vegas kid.”

» READ MORE: ‘We’re built for this’: Bryson Stott and Aaron Nola lead the Phillies to inevitable NLDS battle with the Braves