LOS ANGELES—Bryce Harper missed the prom. He didn’t get to experience senioritis or have a ditch day at the lake with the rest of his class. He didn’t walk across a stage and receive a diploma while his family snapped pictures.
Bryce Harper gave up the final years of his childhood willingly and specifically to expedite the journey to this day.
“Bryce has made a lot of sacrifices,” agent Scott Boras said.
A few ticks before 4 p.m. at Dodger Stadium, Harper squeezed his way through a tightly knit media hoard and sat in front of it to answer questions for 10 minutes. He smiled and said the right things, nothing controversial and nothing to ignite criticism.
Two hours later the sacrifices paid off. The player with more media attention, hype, promise and critics than any player to never play a major league game before him, debuted for the Washington Nationals.
At 19 years old, Harper is one of the youngest players in all of professional baseball, including the minor leagues. He brought with him a couple of bags of luggage, a gray outfielder’s glove, a handful of slick-looking silver Marucci bats, a documentary film crew and a personal photographer hired by Under Armour, one of Harper’s endorsers.
Harper also carried in about as many expectations as anyone to ever put on a baseball uniform. Those expectations were born because he skipped his final two years of high school to play junior college ball and became the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 draft, a path never traveled before.
Harper had 29 family members and friends in attendance, many making the dusty, four-hour drive from his hometown Las Vegas to Tinseltown, and as always, his father Ron was the one delivering the simple advice.
“He told me to just go have fun,” Harper said. “He told me it’s the same game I’ve been playing my whole life, so go enjoy yourself.”
It would be difficult not to enjoy a debut that included a go-ahead sacrifice fly in the ninth inning, a screaming double off the center-field wall for a first hit and a missile of a throw to the plate that showed the league they should expect stop signs when the ball is hit to Harper.
Harper also had a Dodger fan moon him during his first at-bat and a fan in a Nationals hat run onto the field pointing at him before the fan was pummeled by security.
None of that was worse than Matt Kemp’s walkoff home run in the 10th inning.
“That sucked,” Harper said.
Overall, it was a strong debut. Harper showed the attributes that made him the game’s top prospect coming into this season.
“I wasn’t nervous, but right before the game I was sitting in the dugout,” Harper said, “and I was thinking to myself, ‘Wow. I’m in the big leagues.’”
He received big league boos each time his name was announced. Dodgers fans are normally not a surly bunch, but their reaction to Harper was understandable and it’s going to be like that at visiting ballparks for a while. Harper rubs some people the wrong way, what with his arrogant persona and wild Mohawk/mullet hairdo. If he’s on the other team, he’s easy to despise.
“If you’re going to mess with my team, I’m going to come right back at you,” Harper said when asked about some of his on-field antics. “That’s how it’s always been and I’ll leave it at that.”
The boos, the attention, the constant Twitter updates on his stirrups, hair and play, all of it is a product of how Harper got himself to the big leagues, starting with him skipping his final two years of high school and earning a GED so he could play college baseball.
Harper, his family and then-advisor Boras wanted the game to be competitive, and it just wasn’t at the high school level. It actually wasn’t at the junior college level, either. Harper was intentionally walked, pitched around and feared whether he was at the plate or squatting behind it because base runners didn’t dare steal on his cannon arm when he was a catcher.
From the time Boras presented the Harpers with the idea of skipping high school years, Harper’s path has been set. This day was inevitable in everyone’s mind. Harper was going to be a major league baseball player, and it was just a matter of when.
If he stays with the Nationals for the rest of the season is up to Harper, but it’s not like he’d be the only teenager ever to be sent down. It happened to Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr. and plenty of other guys who have had stellar careers. Harper is just the latest of his kind to make his debut, although in a much different time and under much different circumstances.
Harper said he wasn’t nervous before the game, and that’s because this is just the culmination of everything he’s already gone through. He is a big leaguer now.
Boras met Harper outside the stadium when he arrived, and as the two walked through a tunnel and the Dodger Stadium turf presented itself, Harper put his debut, the hoopla and craze into perspective the way a baseball player does.
“Yep,” Harper said. “The grass is still green.”
source: http://aol.sportingnews.com/mlb/story/2012-04-29/bryce-harper-washington-nationals-stephen-strasburg-matt-kemp-los-angeles-dodger
