How to watch DBacks vs. Phillies. Get ready for Game 1 Corbin Carrol-Bryce Harper showdown

Who are the Philadelphia Phillies playing in the National League Championship Series again?

Oh, sorry. I’ve just been paying attention to national media coverage of the baseball postseason. You know, the one with the Atlanta Braves and the LA Dodgers?

Only trouble is, they aren’t playing anymore.

And the Arizona Diamondbacks are.

(Insert raspberry noise here.)

The Diamondbacks are the kings of the backhanded compliment. Sure, they’re advancing against all odds in what has become a truly magical season, but. … Their sweeps of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Dodgers are typically mentioned in the context of those teams losing, not Arizona winning.

It’s enough to drive you crazy. And it’s not likely to stop.

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What channel is the Diamondbacks game on?

Game 1 of the NLCS is scheduled for 5:07 p.m. Monday, Oct. 16 on TBS. Brian Anderson will handle play by play, with Jeff Francoeur and Ron Darling serving as analysts. You can hear the game on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM, as Greg Schulte winds down his career calling Diamondbacks games.

No more Bob Costas, so Arizona fans will have to find someone else to hate.

If you want to know what the perception of this series is like, here’s a good example. I regularly listen to “The Tony Kornheiser Show” podcast. Now Kornheiser is best known as co-host of “Pardon the Interruption” on ESPN. But he was previously a great columnist for the Washington Post, carving out a career writing both sports and features columns. (In case you’re wondering where I got the idea.)

He began Friday’s show sizing up the NLCS like this: “It’s hard for me to believe Philadelphia is going to take Arizona seriously.”

Ugh.

But why should they? No one else is.

The LA Times basically called the DBacks losers

When the Diamondbacks swept the Dodgers, the Los Angeles Times sent out an alert for a column by the great Bill Plaschke that said, “The Dodgers’ latest playoff failure might be the worst of them all, a humiliating sweep to underdog Arizona.”

Sounds like someone didn’t see the Diamondbacks coming.

Good. Playing as an underdog has served the team well so far.

You always want to be David in this situation, not Goliath. It’s just more fun from a fan perspective, and from a TV perspective. Rodney Dangerfield made a career out of not getting any respect.

But I will repeat this until my fingers can’t type anymore: Watching the top of the Diamondbacks lineup — Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, Tommy Pham and Christian Walker — hit is as exciting as anything in sports right now. You don’t know what is going to happen, but you know there’s a good chance something will.

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Corbin Carroll is reason enough to watch

Carroll is one of the great stories in baseball, a waterbug on the bases with tremendous power at the plate. (I have thus exhausted my baseball-writing cliches. Thank you for your time.)

Instead, we mostly hear about how the Diamondbacks finished 16 games behind the Dodgers in the regular season, a number mentioned so often they ought to carve it in stone somewhere.

Or how they are proof that the postseason format is broken and should be fixed. To be fair, the Phillies get some of that too for knocking off the Braves, the higher-seeded team with a better record. These are two Wild Card teams playing for a trip to the World Series, after all.

But mostly you just hear about how good the Phillies are.

Greg Schulte is signing off: He's been the voice of the Arizona Diamondbacks since 1998

And, of course, Philadelphia Phillies' Bryce Harper

With good reason — they really are.

Bryce Harper seems like a seriously weird dude, but he is as exciting to watch as any player in baseball. (The weird part plays into that, as well.) He and Carroll are what baseball — and especially baseball on TV — needs: players who appeal to the casual fan.

You may not know, or care, what their Wins Above Replacement stats are, but at least their names sound familiar, in a, “Hmm, I’m curious about that” kind of way.

None of this is to say that Arizona can remain as ridiculously hot as they have been. But it sure will be fun to watch them try.

There are four teams left in this thing. It’s Houston vs. Texas in the American League Championship Series. And it’s the Phillies vs. the Diamondbacks in the NLCS.

Try to remember that.

Diamondbacks game today on TV

Monday, Oct. 16: Arizona at Philadelphia, Game 1, 5:07 p.m. on TBS.

Tuesday, Oct. 17: Arizona at Philadelphia, Game 2, 5:07 p.m on TBS.

Thursday, Oct. 19: Philadelphia at Arizona, Game 3, 2:07 p.m. on TBS.

Friday, Oct. 20: Philadelphia at Arizona, Game 4, 5:07 p.m. on TBS.

Saturday, Oct. 21: Philadelphia at Arizona, Game 5 (if necessary), 5:07 p.m. on TBS.

Monday, Oct. 23: Arizona at Philadelphia, Game 6 (if necessary), 2:07 p.m. on TBS.

Tuesday, Oct. 24Arizona at Philadelphia, Game 7 (if necessary), 5:07 p.m.

Reach Goodykoontz at bill.goodykoontz@arizonarepublic.com. Facebook: facebook.com/GoodyOnFilm. Twitter: @goodyk.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What time is the Diamondbacks game today? How to watch Corbin Carroll