Another road game meant another crowd to jeer Bryce Harper, this time in Colorado. Parents with young children in tow shouted at him and his team. Such is the perverse respect, with its unspoken lining of fear, that fans weaponize against the best player on the best team in the nervousness of the last inning of a one-run game.
Harper disappointed them. He led his team to victory. It felt so good and so overwhelming in the face of hostility that he broke down and cried.
He was 11 years old.
“There was a runner on second from the guy that was trying to close it out and they brought me in to pitch,” Harper says. “I got like a pop-up and a punchout and a groundout or something. I remember crying after the game because the pressure and the emotion was so high that it kind of all came out. The parents and everybody were screaming and yelling.
“The crying might sound bad, but it wasn’t bad. It was just the release of the emotion of playing. I’m really thankful that I had those opportunities to go through those moments.
“I go back a lot now to when I was younger, and I feel like those moments got me ready for these types of moments now. I loved growing up and playing in those situations.”
Twenty years later, Harper, 31, never has taken an unscrutinized at bat. Never has he enjoyed the luxury of anonymity. Never has he known the usual latitude of making youthful mistakes out of the spotlight. Never has he played baseball without the other team and most spectators knowing exactly who he was and the greatness of which he was capable.
From being the first preteen superstar hired gun at the birth of the travel ball era, to the cover of Sports Illustrated at 16, to the youngest unanimous MVP at 22, to the most expensive free agent in history at 26, Harper has lived his entire baseball life in the crucible of fame. Living nonstop in the pressure of this ecosystem, he swears, is what he loves best about baseball.
But the Cubs were three years into an eight-year, $184 million commitment to Jason Heyward, another lefty-hitting right fielder. Harper and his agent, Scott Boras, also found a roadblock with the Yankees. New York had traded for Giancarlo Stanton, a power-hitting outfielder, 12 months earlier. Boras told the Yankees Harper would be happy to play first base. New York GM Brian Cashman said the team didn’t think Harper could play first base and that the roster was loaded with seven outfielders, the likes of which included Miguel Andujar, Clint Frazier and Brett Gardner. The Yankees passed. A left-handed power vacuum in the Bronx would remain until Cashman traded for Juan Soto last winter.
Asked to explain such a well of confidence, Harper says, “I feel like there are certain situations that you’re sitting there, and they don’t want to make a bad pitch, [so] they hang a curveball. And there are times where they do make good pitches, and I get out. But I really want to be in those situations because it gives me that chance, that moment, that opportunity. And it’s just fun. The more pressure in the situation or the later in the game it is, the more I really, really enjoy it—especially late in the year.”
Days shorten. Nights cool. Tensions rise. The season of Harper dawns. And the stakes only are getting higher. This fall the Phillies’ first baseman will play in his seventh postseason in his 13 years in the big leagues. His accomplishments already evoke those of the all-time greats. His combination of power, patience and speed is so elite that he is only the third player to reach 300 home runs, 1,000 walks and 100 stolen bases through age 31. (The others are Mickey Mantle and Barry Bonds.)
After making his debut at age 19, Harper played seven years with the Nationals, including an MVP season in 2015 when at 22 he displaced Babe Ruth as the youngest player (by three years) to hit more than 40 homers and draw more than 120 walks in the same season.
As good as Harper was in Washington, he has been even better statistically in his six years with the Phillies. What best defines him, though, are the things that thrill him most: the biggest games and the biggest moments. His career slugging percentage in the postseason is .613, almost 100 points higher than his regular season mark of .521. Among the 200 players with at least 150 postseason plate appearances, only four have slugged better than Harper: Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Nelson Cruz and George Brett. “It’s weird, because the bigger the moment, the more chill he is,” says Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long. “The more it becomes, O.K., I was built for this. I’ve been in pressure situations my whole life. And [the game] really slows down for him.”
Says Phillies senior advisor Larry Bowa, the former shortstop and Yankees coach, “He reminds me a lot of [Derek] Jeter, though Jeet wasn’t the power hitter this guy is. If he fails in the ninth inning, he wants to be up there tomorrow in the ninth inning. He don’t give a s—. I mean, he cares about coming through, but he doesn’t back off the moment. If the game’s on the line in the World Series, he wants to be the guy up there. That’s hard to do. And it’s not whistling past the graveyard, either. He wants to be there. He really does.”
Harper’s teams in Washington and Philadelphia are 26–23 in the postseason but have never won the last game. In the 2022 World Series, the Phillies took two of the first three games against the Astros before Houston won three straight. Last year Philadelphia was one win away from returning to the World Series but lost Games 6 and 7 of the NLCS to Arizona. This season may be Harper’s best chance.
“Since a very young age,” Harper says, “I’ve always said the same three things. I want to be the best I can be. I want to win championships. And I want to be one of the greatest of all time.
“It’s always kind of been that way, right? But I’m satisfied with where I am. Happy. I’m so happy to be a Philadelphia Phillie. I’m so happy to be here and be part of this organization. I’m satisfied with where I am. It’s just … those three things? I’ll never be satisfied on those.”
