Bryce Harper Lets Make Baseball Great Again

Bryce Harper's intensity has been both a blessing and a curse. On Wed, it earned him a one-game suspension from MLB after he had words for an umpire afterwards he had already been ejected. Harper is appealing the ban. (John McDonnell/The Washington Mail)

From at present until the last syllable of Bryce Harper's Cooperstown speech, the fight will persist. His greatest competition possesses neither a 98 mph fastball nor a 12-vi curveball. The master event will always be his irreverence vs. baseball convention. It is a fight he will never win, no affair his prodigious talent.

Sometimes, Harper is sparring to brand baseball fun again, which is a noble pursuit. Other times, he's fighting a much more personal boxing — with his temper and with decorum — and in those instances, this dry, wearisome old game can sit dorsum and let him waste matter free energy staving off negative and inaccurate perceptions about his graphic symbol. They are dissimilar issues, Harper'south desire to spread joy and his short fuse. But they are as well easily intertwined in public opinion, creating polarity within the most fascinating figure currently in baseball.

Harper should dominion the game, along with Mike Trout and a few others, forming peradventure the well-nigh incredible nether-25 superheroes baseball has ever seen. Instead, he is the sport'southward lightning rod, an MVP who flickers from respected to controversial with regularity. The latest: Major League Baseball suspended Harper one game and fined him an undisclosed amount Wednesday for his actions after being ejected from a game Monday nighttime.

[Harper appeals i-game intermission from MLB]

In the bottom of the ninth inning on Monday, plate umpire Brian Knight ejected Harper, who was ane of several Washington Nationals protesting in the dugout after Danny Espinosa was chosen out on strikes. So Clint Robinson won the game with a walk-off home run, and Harper emerged from the clubhouse and ran onto the field to celebrate with his teammates. He also pointed toward Knight and cursed at him.

Harper made himself bachelor for a postgame interview and spoke with his usual honesty, telling reporters he had "a couple of choice words" for Knight. Asked nigh the possibility of a fine, he said: "If I do, I exercise. I'll pay it. Maybe (Knight) volition get fined, too. We'll see."

In general, I'm a Harper defender considering people take gotten carried away with the narrative of him being a immature punk, especially nationally, and that's an incomplete story. Information technology'southward unfortunate that he was branded a hothead as a teenager, and the layers of his personality aren't detailed enough. In the community, he has become a great Nationals ambassador. He is warm with fans and does kind things without seeking attending. And for all the talk about his long-term plans, he reps D.C. amend than any star currently in the city. So I'm not into the "Oh, at that place goes Bryce again" sensationalizing of his tantrums.

[Chicago's Joe Maddon: Harper will exist 'Bonds-like']

Harper shouldn't modify. Baseball will be better in the long run for having him, all of him, fifty-fifty the controversial parts that inspire endless debate. But he has to be smarter. He has to become a more refined version of the passionate superstar that mesmerizes us for 162 games a year.

The game needs Harper's intensity. Harper needs it, also. It's part of what makes him a great histrion. It's part of why he has the focus to go pitched around for iv at-bats in a game, and so drive the ball on that fifth at-bat, when he sees the but expert pitch he received all night.

Manager Dusty Baker, who has gotten the all-time out of many different personalities over the years, has the proper perspective on Harper. He wants him to be peppery. But when he needs to, he'll bargain with the rest.

"In that location are enough emotionless people in the world," Baker said Tuesday. "I like emotion. There's nothing incorrect with emotion, especially when you're younger and you're supposed to be full of emotion. I accept no problem with Bryce. I happen to like the young man, not because he'due south a heck of a ballplayer, only I happen to similar him, period. Know what I hateful?

[Stephen Strasburg just got a new deal. Is Bryce Harper side by side?]

"Now, will I have to spank him sometimes? Mayhap. I like my son, too, but it happens sometimes."

Let'south consider that ane Baker's Too Much Information gem of the week.

Baseball just spanked Harper, again. He is appealing the suspension, and it'll be interesting to encounter how his side argues the ban. Y'all can make a convincing argument that the pause was fabricated, non out of precedent, only out of overreaction to the media attention given to the fit Harper threw.

Of course, Harper can argue the attention is non his error, but it kind of is. He has to be self-aware. He has to empathise what he has created. He is a target now. When you lot declare you want to change baseball's tired ways, you have to realize that scrutiny will come. And when Harper is in the incorrect, there will be extreme marvel over how he is treated.

On Monday nighttime, Harper's actions may have cost his team a game of his production, and you know the Nationals need all the law-breaking they tin can get. That can't happen. That'due south the line Harper tin can't cross, not to rub a victory in the face of an umpire. He doesn't have to change, merely he must channel his emotions better.

His fight to make the game more than appealing is compelling and worthwhile. His tantrums will only impede progress.

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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/bryce-harper-is-great-at-baseball-managing-his-emotions-not-so-much/2016/05/11/d878a67e-17c6-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html

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