The Phillies? Why does it almost always have to be the Phillies come the playoffs?

I long ago branded these Battlin’ Braves as just another regular season wonder in a long, long line of Atlanta regular season wonders, built for the long haul rather than a best-of-three wildcard playoff series. Just like all those division winners that the late, great Bobby Cox managed who so often flopped in the postseason.

But as this remarkable Atlanta season of grit and guile progressed in the face of seemingly endless injuries to pitchers, who once upon a time in the chill of winter figured to be a strength, you couldn’t help but fall hard for this team.

One of the most iconic movie lines of the last 50 years kept swirling in my head with each fresh Bravo victory.

Near the end of Godfather Part III, Al Pacino’s character, Michael Corleone, says of his attempts to leave the Mafia, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Does anything better describe being a Braves fan this summer? Every time you think they’re falling apart, sure to be caught by the Phillies, maybe even bounced from playoff contention by too many injuries and too few intelligent at-bats, they rally. Big-time.

So much so that when the playoffs begin on Tuesday at 2 p.m. at Truist Park, the Braves will face the Phillies owning not only the third best record in the National League behind the magnificently constructed Milwaukee Brewers and the defending world champion Los Angeles Dodgers, but the fourth best record in all of baseball, only Tampa Bay’s 98-64 mark topping the Braves’ record of 94-68 in the American League.

And yet here we are for the third time in five years about to face the Phillies, an organization that is 3-0 all-time against Atlanta in the postseason, including 3-1 Division Series wins over the Braves in 2022 and 2023.

So why should anyone expect this best-of-three wildcard series — despite all three games, if necessary, being played at Truist — to be different? Injured pitchers Spencer Strider and Spencer Schwellenbach aren’t suiting up over the next 24 hours.

And for all the grand work 37-year-old Chris Sale has done on the mound thus far in crafting a ridiculously good ERA of 2.16 — which shrank to an even more impressive 2.08 in four starts and 26 innings against Philadelphia — his playoff history is one of famine rather than feast. He has a 7.24 ERA in seven postseason starts and has gone less than five innings in four of those.

Over the first third of this season, it seemed as if an otherworldly bit of cosmic serendipity was guiding this team, as if Cox and former owner Ted Turner, who teamed up for Atlanta’s 1995 world championship, were up in heaven after leaving this earth three days apart in May, pulling all the right strings from above.

Atlanta soared to a 45-20 mark and everything was clicking all the time. But then the pitching waned, position players slumped and the Phillies climbed to within a couple of games of the Braves in August. It seemed to be a feel-good story that ran out of rope.

For those who believe this year against the Phillies will be different, Atlanta did win nine of 13 games against the Phils in the regular season, including four of six at Truist. So there is hope, especially since the Phillies lost five of their final six games in the regular season.

“We’ve had a lot of good battles with them,” said Braves slugger extraordinaire Matt Olson. “That’s what the postseason is for. We’ve got a lot of respect for them. They’re a good team. It just feels right, doesn’t it?”

It feels familiar. Sadly so. Let’s just hope Cox and Turner have a wee bit of magic left while watching this one unfold from the best seat in the house.

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Mark Wiedmer can be reached at mwiedmer@mccallie.org