Mets’ magic about to get put to test by powerful Phillies

PHILADELPHIA — The Mets warmed up for the main event by settling an old score with a chatty old villain named Rhys Hoskins.

You recall Hoskins: charter member of the Phillies revival a few years back, before he went down with a knee injury. Hit 15 homers as a Phillie against the Mets, including one in which he took 34 seconds to tour the bases, savoring every instant after the man who threw the ball, Jacob Rhame, had previously nearly brained him with a pitch.

He hit two more against them this year as a Brewer, including a grand slam last Friday off Sean Manaea that threatened to halt their Pixie Dust Express before it ever left the station. And, of course, you probably remember Opening Day, March 29, when he slid hard into Jeff McNeil and McNeil angrily confronted him, citing a series of past grievances.

Hoskins responded by mockingly wiping his eyes when he got back to the dugout.

Hoskins wears Brewers blue now and not Phillies red, but you can tell he still has a lot of Phillie in him. He all but rejoiced in getting hit by a pitch by Luis Severino with the bases juiced in Game 1, and from every corner of Metsdom you could hear a similar hue and cry:

“THAT bleeping guy …”

But Hoskins came to bat nine more times in the series, went 0-for-9, struck out three times, and late Thursday morning was forced to deliver what amounted to a concession speech on behalf of his teammates in a stricken Milwaukee clubhouse.

“There’s a lot of disappointment right now,” Hoskins whispered.

Yes. He was the appetizer. Now comes the main event. Now come the Phillies. Mets/Phillies is one of the great rivalries in sports that has never had a genuine flashpoint. It’s like a great love affair that’s never been consummated — only exactly the opposite. They’ve never met in the postseason until now, until Game 1 of the NLDS at Citizens Bank Park Saturday at 4:08 p.m.

They’ve only sporadically gotten in each other’s way in the regular season, too, despite sharing the same division since 1969. But there have been plenty of bad feelings generated and, more to the point: whenever the Phillies and the Mets have gone after a 50/50 ball, the Phillies have generally come down with it.

And rarely been shy about it.

So this will be a prodigious task for the Mets, who are all about good vibes and positive mojo now, who’ve led with their hearts for four months and lately have gotten a season’s worth of absurdly clutch play in less than a week.

They will need all of this as they play the Phillies. And for the Phillies, it has to be like looking in the mirror. The last two years, the Phillies were the ones high on pixie dust, storming out of the play-in round. Two years ago, they landed in the World Series — which is like a team making it out of the First Four in Dayton all the way to the Final Four — and last year came within a game of repeating it.

They did it with terrific players, sure, but both years it seemed like whatever magic they’d cornered early just kept growing. Because they did so much early work on the road, by the time they eventually got back to CBP, it became a calamitous cauldron for higher-seeded teams — kind of what you can expect at Citi Field for Game 3 of this series Tuesday night.

But even the Phillies have never had a week like this one, or a stretch of hard-to-believe alchemy like the Mets have enjoyed. The Mets played the Phillies virtually even this year — 6-7 — so they know they’re good enough to compete. But if they can sustain the sorcery …

“We know it’s October,” Brandon Nimmo said late Thursday night. “We know anything can happen. We keep proving it.”

But if this is to be as satisfying an assignment as Mets fans hope, it won’t only be because they’ve kept the Magic Bus fueled (sing it: “I want it … I want it … I want it …). Because if the pixie dust is really all-powerful, it will allow them — and the Mets, of course — to settle all family business.

For the collapse in 2007. For the encore collapse in ’08. For Cole Hamels calling them “chokers” back in ’08 — and then taking another stone shot at the Mets during his retirement ceremony in June: “You guys wanted the best for us. And we wanted to give it to you — unless you’re the Mets.”

(Which makes zero sense, of course, but then, when you harbor such hatred in your heart, your tongue sometimes gets a little tangled.)

For Jimmy Rollins, who got it all started by declaring the Phillies the “team to beat” in 2007 despite finishing a mile and half behind the Mets in ’06, and who hasn’t stopped chirping since about how “we lived in the Mets’ heads” (which was true, of course).

And, yes, for Chase Utley, perhaps the most detested Mets opponent of all-time, the spiritual antecedent of Hoskins, who hit .873 lifetime against the Mets (actually it was only .281) with 77 homers (it was only 39), broke up a thousand double plays, spikes up (that’s a real stat) and wound up somehow getting the last laugh as a Dodger by famously sending Terry Collins and Noah Syndergaard’s [butts] into the jackpot when they tried (and failed, naturally) to plant a retaliatory fastball in Utley’s ear.

Yes. Magic is nice. But sending the Phillies home will be a different kind of magic altogether. Gas up the Magic Bus. Race for the Turnpike. Pronto.