Within hours of Bryce Harper’s outburst and ejection from a Double-A game in Harrisburg on Wednesday night, the footage was airing on ESPN’s “SportsCenter.” There is no prospect in baseball under the microscope like Harper. Virtually everything notable he does blows up into a story. That’s one reason general manager Mike Rizzo wanted to keep Harper in the minors all of this season and maybe some of next year, too. He needs to learn how to deal with long road trips, slumps, playing through pain and, yes, bad umpires. Unfortunately, Harper doesn’t get to learn those lessons cloaked in anonymity like most minor leaguers. The crowds in Double-A rarely top 6,000, but almost every game Harper plays at that level is shot by some television outlet.
“That’s a lot of pressure on an 18-year-old,” MASN analyst F.P. Santangelo said during Thursday’s Cubs-Nationals game. “Obviously, it goes with the territory — all the good and the bad. But when you talk about being 18 in Double-A and everything you do is on ‘SportsCenter,’ is on every single outlet, every channel, on the Internet. Who doesn’t snap on an umpire every once in a while? But you do it and you’re Bryce Harper, it’s everywhere.”
Already this season Harper took heat for blowing a kiss at an opposing pitcher after a home run while he was still at low-A Hagerstown. It turned out the pitcher had been preening after every strikeout, but Harper’s reaction was the reason it turned into a national incident. That reputation was forged in 2010 at the College of Southern Nevada when Harper was ejected from a Junior College World Series game when he drew a line in the batter’s box to show an umpire where he missed a call. That led to an automatic suspension, and his team lost without him.
A pair of Nats front-office officials even garnered criticism last month after comments to Sports Illustrated comparing Harper’s plight to that of Jackie Robinson. That didn’t help. But all of this has to be factored into Harper’s development curve now. The cameras are always rolling. So how does he deal with that?
– Brian McNally
