PHILADELPHIA — No matter how it’s spelled, anyone named Zack (or Zac) indubitably grows up hearing the phrase “Zack (or Zac) Attack.” Nickname, exclamation, whatever. And in NLCS Game 1, Zack Wheeler and Zac Gallen each came out on the attack with their trademark fastballs.
One, however, got attacked back.
The game-swinging difference in Wheeler and the Philadelphia Phillies’ 5-3 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks was not in the planning or the strategy but purely in the execution — in the inches and fractions of seconds that take on epic proportions in the heightened state of the MLB playoffs.