A Destiny Fulfilled

Bryce Harper was christened "The Chosen One" at 16. On Sunday night, he homered to win Philadelphia the National League pennant.

Bryce Harper circles the bases after hitting the home run to win the NL pennant for the Phillies. (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)

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Imagine being a teenager, gangly and with eye black covering half your baby face, on the cover of Sports Illustrated next to a headline that reads “BASEBALL’S CHOSEN ONE.” The editors of the magazine have chosen a photo of you as you have finished a mighty uppercut swing, and they have placed you on a dirty hill in your native Las Vegas, probably to hint to their readers that you play the game in such a way that your pristine white uniform is always filthy by the fifth inning of every game. Below “BASEBALL’S CHOSEN ONE,” they’ve written “BRYCE HARPER IS THE MOST EXCITING PRODIGY SINCE LEBRON.”

The right side of the cover screams:

570 FOOT HOME RUNS.

96 MPH FASTBALLS.

16 YEARS OLD.

There is no way for a mere mortal to live up to this kind of hype except, well, LeBron James did. But that’s basketball, a sport that’s so much easier to predict.

Could Bryce Harper really become the best baseball player since Willie Mays or, say, Babe. Ruth? And could that prediction really be made five years before he could (legally) drink a beer?

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The Washington Nationals took Harper with the first pick in the 2010 draft when he was just 17 years old. (To become eligible to get drafted so young, he got his high school GED at 16, enrolled at a local junior college, and won the Golden Spikes Award for national collegiate player of the year.)

But he came with a rep for being a bit of brat as well. During his final college game, he was ejected by the home plate umpire after arguing a third strike call and drawing a line in the dirt to mark where he thought the ball had landed. He was suspended for the incident, was unable to play in the rest of the National Junior College World Series, and his team was eliminated as a result.

The Nationals called Harper up to the big leagues at age 19, and he made his debut as a visiting player at Dodger Stadium. I raced to the stadium that day, so eager to get a look at what all the fuss was about. The Nationals’ No. 1 overall pick from the year before they took Harper, Stephen Strasburg, was on the hill that day. Chad Billingsley was pitching for the Dodgers. The game was knotted 0-0 into the seventh, when Adam LaRoche hit a solo shot. Later in the inning, Harper collected his first big-league hit off of Billingsley, a screaming double to centerfield.

Then in the ninth, Harper hit a go-ahead sacrifice fly to give the Nationals the lead, 2-1. (Washington would lose the game in extras, because they were awful that year. The Dodgers were bad that year, too, but they had Matt Kemp, back when Matt Kemp was awesome, and he hit the game-winning walk-off home run).

I remember leaving the stadium that night and thinking Harper was better than I expected. Not because he hit a double and drove in the go-ahead run in the ninth, but because he played like his hair was on fire. How could someone who was derided as being full of himself because the game came too easy to him also be the guy who out-hustled everyone else on the field?

The next time he came to Dodger Stadium in 2013, he crashed into a wall face-first so hard going after a fly ball that he nearly decapitated himself, and required stitches in his neck.

Suddenly, the headlines changed from “Is Bryce Harper Too Arrogant?” to “Is Bryce Harper Too Aggressive?”

He won the Rookie of the Year award in 2012, then the NL MVP in 2015. He was named to the All-Star team in six of the seven years he played in Washington. But when he hit free agency after the 2018 season, the Nats opted to let him go, perhaps because they were saving whatever money he required to stay to give to Strasburg.

And so, Harper decamped to division rival Philadelphia, who gave him a 13-year deal worth $333 million dollars.

The Nationals then won their first and only World Series title the following year, in 2019. It must have hurt Harper like hell to watch his former teammates celebrate without him, and to miss winning it all by one lousy year. His Phillies, on the other hand, finished 81-81.

But oh, how things have changed. The Nationals did award Strasburg a fat contract after his dominant 2019 playoff run, inking him to a deal worth seven years and $245 million. They let Anthony Rendon leave in free agency to the Angels, and traded Trea Turner, Max Scherzer and Juan Soto, presumably because they did not want to pay them their fair market rate when they hit free agency, and they could not afford to keep them all.

Unfortunately for the Nationals, they bet on the wrong horse. Injuries have limited Strasburg to just eight games in the past three seasons. And in September, Strasburg gave a devastating interview where he said he may never pitch again.

If Harper was sad to leave Washington, it looks like the best thing that could have happened to his career now. With their ridiculous core of superstar young players, the Nats looked primed to build a juggernaut like the Astros or Dodgers. Instead they blew it all up, and lost 107 games this year, the most in the majors.

Meanwhile, Philadelphia slid into the playoffs with the new-this-year sixth seed in the National League, and now they will face the mighty Astros in the World Series as enormous underdogs.

Houston has not yet lost in the 2022 playoffs, having beaten the Mariners in the Division Series three games to zero and swept the Yankees in the ALCS. But they have not yet had to face Harper.

The Phillies entered the eighth inning of Game 5 of the NLCS on Sunday night trailing by a run. The Padres needed six outs to keep their season alive. They sent flame-throwing Robert Suarez to the mound. Suarez, a 31-year-old rookie, had been a revelation for San Diego this season, and had allowed no runs and only one hit in seven postseason innings. He began the inning by giving up a single to J.T. Realmuto, putting the tying run on base.

Padres manager Bob Melvin had the option of bringing the team’s best reliever, Josh Hader, in to face Realmuto, Harper and Nick Castellanos in the eighth inning. Hader throws left-handed, and Harper has a career OPS of .821 against LHP, and a career OPS of .954 against RHP.

Suarez throws right-handed, but he had not allowed a home run to left-handed hitters in 98 at-bats during the regular season and postseason.

So, Melvin rolled the dice and went with Suarez, presumably saving Hader for the bottom of the ninth.

The bottom of the ninth never happened.

On the seventh pitch of the at-bat, with a 2-2 count, Harper hammered a center cut 99-mile per hour heater from Suarez and whacked it over the left-centerfield fence to give the Phillies a dramatic, come-from-behind, pennant clinching win.

It was no-doubt a scenario he practiced over and over again when he was a 16-year-old kid taking batting practice with his dad in the dirt and heat of the brutal Las Vegas summers.

As he rounded the bases and stretched his right arm into the air to gesture to his fans, his family and the rest of the baseball universe watching on television, I wondered if the weight of all that pressure placed on him as the kid who could save baseball had finally been lifted.

Some people do their best work when the lights get brighter. Harper has a career regular-season OPS of .913, but a lifetime postseason OPS of .997. He went 8 for 20 in this NLCS and tallied more home runs (2) than strikeouts (1). For that, he was named the series MVP.

Bryce Harper has never appeared in the World Series. That will change on Friday.

I cannot wait to see what he can do on the game’s biggest stage.