A final glance back at Phils' thrilling 2022 season

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And _subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox._

It has been fun looking back this spring at the many special moments the Phillies had last fall in the postseason.

But it’s all about 2023 now, including a potentially new victory song.

Well, there is one last 2022 thing coming.

Phillies players will receive their National League championship rings a week from Sunday, before their April 9 game against the Reds at Citizens Bank Park. They are not the rings the Phillies wanted, but the ceremony will provide one final, formal look back at those fun times.

The Phillies sent two pieces of memorabilia from their unexpected postseason run to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.: Bryce Harper’s batting helmet, which he wore in various NL Wild Card Series, NL Division Series, NL Championship Series and World Series games; and the bat Alec Bohm used to hit his home run in Game 3 of the World Series, which was the 1,000th home run in World Series history.

Bohm last month shared the wild story about that home run.

Harper’s helmet or Bohm’s bat would be the prize of any Phillies fan’s collection. But, in my mind, the two most significant pieces of history from last fall’s Red October are Harper’s home run bat from Game 5 of the NLCS and Rhys Hoskins’ home-run bat from Game 3 of the NLDS.

Harper recently relived his epic home run with The Athletic’s Matt Gelb. It is a fantastic read (subscription required).

Harper told me a couple weeks ago that he has the Game 5 bat at home in New Jersey.

“I’ll put it in a case when I have a gym or something like that,” he said. “It’s one I want to have. But I usually don’t keep any of my stuff. I just live in the moment, right? My wife [Kayla] gets so mad at me because she’s like, ‘You have to keep these things.’ But I just don’t care, because I live in the moment. I loved it, right? But it was just never my thing.

"But Game 5, I kept the whole uniform. I kept the bat, the helmet, the cleats, the batting gloves. I have everything. I have it all. If I ever get a mannequin or something like that, I could put it on that. But, yeah, I usually don’t keep that stuff. But there are big moments in your life, so I did this time.”

Hoskins and his wife, Jayme, recently shared their stories from the postseason -- including Hoskins’ ballpark-rattling homer in Game 3 of the NLDS and Jayme buying beers for fans on the concourse in the NLCS and World Series.

So, where’s the bat-spike bat?

“It’s in my bat bag,” Hoskins said.

Wait, like his bat bag in Clearwater?

“It was with me through the offseason, and now it’s here,” he said. “I have it. I know where it is. But that one’s retired.”