DC fans shower Harper with boos
WASHINGTON — Bryce Harper has always seen the big picture, ever since he was a teenage phenom in Las Vegas, garnering YouTube fame with his slugging, meeting an agent named Scott Boras before he had a driver’s license, and graduating early from high school to position himself where he is today.
That place is the richest free agent in baseball history, a 13-year, $330 million contract that will give Harper the fortune he always envisioned, to accompany the fame that’s shadowed him years before he made his debut at 19.
At 26, though, Harper is old enough to know unconditional love is never guaranteed to extend beyond his family and tight circle of friends. That by leaving the team that drafted him, the Nationals, for a Phillies team that made him rich beyond his wildest dreams will leave a mark for many fans.
So as Harper entered Nationals Park as a visiting player for the first time on Tuesday — clad in a hat with a “Positive Vibes” message that might merely be wishful thinking — he was firmly aware that in the end his stint as a Phillie will be almost double the length of his time as a National.
He expected boos, even if he’d prefer a unanimous show of support.
He wanted it to be normal but knows it will never be the same.
“I don’t want it to feel like it’s weird or crazy walking in here,” Harper said four hours before facing Max Scherzer and the Nationals for the first of 19 meetings this season and a possible 247 times over the life of his contract. “But it’s definitely going to be like that. For me, I want to understand and know the good times we had here and remember those good times, and I think the fans will as well. I hope they can.”
Not so much.
Harper was booed by a crowd thinned by a pregame rain delay as his name appeared during the Phillies’ lineup announcement. Then a short tribute video aired that culminated with a simple message: Thank you Bryce.
The boos only kicked up from there, and Harper stayed in the dugout rather than appear for a curtain call. He was booed solidly when he came up for his first at-bat, which culminated after six pitches in a Scherzer strikeout.
The reaction, perhaps more negative than Harper anticipated, only confused his legacy as the most prominent player in Nationals’ history.
He smacked 184 home runs, won the 2015 National League MVP award, made six All-Star teams and was ever the good soldier in his dealings with area youth and time off the field.
The divorce of franchise player and franchise seemed amicable enough, though maybe far from warm and fuzzy.
Any text messages from former teammates leading up to the game? “No,” Harper said. “Not really.” Greatest memory as a National? Harper searched his mental hard drive for a moment before offering up Jayson Werth’s Game 4 walk-off home run in the 2012 NL Division Series, the first playoff series for the team.
Sure, Harper appreciated the standing ovation after his first at-bat in Nationals Park ended in a strikeout. Yet he wasn’t about to get overly wistful in this return. The end was accelerated after Harper and wife Kayla traveled to Palm Springs, California, to meet with Nationals controlling partner Mark Lerner and father Ted, “two days before Christmas,” as Harper easily recalled.
The meeting went great, he says, but as The Washington Post reported, the Nationals’ offer subsequently dropped from 10 years and $300 million, much of it deferred, to 10 years and about $250 million, with even more deferred.
Team and player mostly ghosted each other from then until the Feb. 28 agreement was struck with the Phillies.
“I thought on both sides, it was kind of mutual, and didn’t really bother me,” Harper said Tuesday. “It was, ‘OK, they have two great young outfielders (Juan Soto and Victor Robles), a great plan for what they want to do with their organization.’ As I said all last year, if I’m part of it, great. If I’m not and they want to move on, then OK, I’m probably fine with that as well.
“I have no hard feelings against the Nationals or the Lerner family. They’ve always treated me with the utmost respect. It’s fun to play with an organization that really cares about their players and the fans as well. I’ll always respect the Lerner family in whatever they do.”
Could that mutual respect extend to an entire fan base?
Ryan Zimmerman certainly wishes it could. The longest-tenured National and the franchise’s first true “face” when he was drafted during their inaugural 2005 season, Zimmerman, 34, wonders why there must be rancor every time a player exercises his rights to become a free agent.
“I hope he goes and is a Hall of Famer and breaks home run records,” he said Tuesday. “I’ve been with him since he was a teenager. I think I’ve seen him grow up as a person — I won’t say more than as a player, because he has become a way better player — but seeing him grow up as a person being married now and having a kid on the way … it’s cool to see that kind of stuff.
“It’s OK for everybody to be happy . ... It seems like that nowadays that there’s always someone that needs to be upset, but it’s OK for everyone to be happy.”