Is Baseball Ready for Bryce?

Dear MLB: Please don't muzzle the most entertaining prospect since

Babe Ruth. Thank you, fans everywhere

By Will Leitch

March 15, 2012 3:00 am

"*@&#*$*^!!!" Harper shouts. This is Bryce Harper—baseball’s answer to LeBron James, Mozart child

prodigy of the great game. The Washington Nationals’ 19-year-old prospect is taking big cuts in an impromptu

batting-cage session on the campus of UC Irvine, all for my benefit. I wanted to see the supposed perfect swing

in action. I wanted to witness baseball’s next Barry Bonds. And I’m suddenly a little worried that he’s just

broken his hand.

The man who had been tossing lobs to Harper is a contracted soldier of super-agent Scott Boras, whose offices

are just a few miles west—and in small part paid for by the commission he received from the $9.9 million

contract Harper signed at the age of 17. Indeed, though barely of voting age, Harper is primed to make more

money through sponsorships than almost any ballplayer in the league, and his baseball resume already has the

ring of legend: the 570-foot homer he hit in Las Vegas, where he was reared, at the age of 15; the thump a year

later, at Tropicana Field, that was, at the time, the deepest recorded at the Tampa Bay Rays’ home field; the

blistering speed that allowed him to score from second on wild pitches regularly in high school.

Harper’s swing is so violent that in the cage, the bat cracks even when he misses. The trainer seems not so

comfortable: This is his first time underhanding batting practice to Bryce, and he keeps hearing about it from

the kid. ("My dad"—Harper’s trainer since T-ball—"is better at tossing these.") He’s also crouched four feet

from the end of Harper’s bat; one errant swing and the trainer’s teeth might be scattered to Newport Beach.

"When I hit the ball," Harper says, "I do want to hurt it."

Now that Harper’s the one hurt, he takes a hop-step out of the box. Again: "*&@#*$&" A violent toss of his

custom-made Marucci bat—inscribed with LUKE 1:37 ("For with God nothing shall be impossible")—across

the batting cage. "Screw it, I’m done." Harper shakes his hands vigorously and shoves them into a pile of infield

dirt adjacent to the cage. "I didn’t know I was hitting today, and I don’t have my gloves," he says. "It hurts like

hell."

What makes Harper far more anticipated than your typical phenom is a sense that he not only recognizes the

vastness of his potential but also feels plenty comfortable telling you about it. One minute he informs me that

"baseball needs more superstars." The next, while discussing Albert Pujols signing with the Angels, he offers

thoughtlessly, "Albert and I know each other and respect each other." In a sport in which "paying your dues" is

practically in the job description—an institution that once made Michael Jordan ride around in a bus for five

months—Harper seems to have emerged fully formed to piss off the baseball establishment.

On his way up, he didn’t shrink from his sometime moniker, the LeBron of baseball. He poured vats of eye

black on his face to make himself look like a professional wrestler. In a minor league game last year, after

hitting a home run, he blew a kiss to the opposing pitcher. That’s the sort of business that will get a major

leaguer a fastball in his ear. As Hall of Fame third baseman Mike Schmidt put it: "I would think at some point

the game itself, the competition on the field, is going to have to figure out a way to police this young man."

In other words: Harper is awesome—exactly what baseball needs. He’s essentially a throwback: a cocky, ornery

cuss who can back it all up. Ty Cobb minus the racism and chaw, Lenny Dykstra before the bankruptcy. He

tells me Pete Rose, a.k.a. Charlie Hustle, is his favorite player and that "I want to play the game hard. I want to

ram it down your throat, put you into left field when I’m going into second base."

Respect is going to be the issue with Harper. Not because of his contract, not because of Schmidt, not because

he’s just 19—but because he plays baseball like he doesn’t care about anything other than making sure someone

else loses. After batting away my questions, he lights up when I ask him what he misses about being a "kid."

"Playing football," he says. "I’m getting chills just thinking about it. That first knock of the game, you are going

on kickoff and you are just trying to smack somebody just as hard as you can. That’s how I play baseball. I want

to hit you. I want to run your butt over. Sorry."

Back in the cage, Harper looks at his hand, and I wonder if a montage of World Series trophies and an endless

supply of money is flashing past his eyes. Luckily, it’s fine. But we could have avoided the whole scare if he’d

only had his gloves. He lost them, he tells me, three days earlier, after a demonstration for some college

coaches. Well, not lost them; they were stolen. One of the coaches, someone from a group of adult human

beings, had waited until Harper wasn’t looking and swiped the gloves, maybe hoping that the souvenir would

one day become the relic of a legend. "You’ll see those on eBay soon," Harper says, laughing.