OPINION:
Bryce Harper was surrounded by reporters as he sat behind his assigned table in the Norfolk Southern Room on the 200 level of Nationals Park, along with other National League All-Stars. He was asked all sorts of questions, with a common theme being pressure.
He was asked if he felt any extra pressure to do well with the All-Star Game here in the Nationals’ home park.
“There’s no pressure,” he responded. “You go out there and have fun and enjoy it. There’s some of the greatest baseball players in this league here in D.C., and as a player and a fan you just want to look at it and enjoy it.”
He was asked about the pressure of his subpar, Mendoza-approaching .214 batting average going into the All-Star break.
“I look up there and see my average as well. and said, ’That sucks,’” Harper answered. “But I look up there and see a little bit to the right side of that and see 23 homers and 54 RBI and walks and runs scored and things like that. Should I be hitting .300 or .280? Yes, absolutely. But I am where I’m at, and hopefully the only way I can go is up.”
And, yes, he was asked about the pressure of the final year of his contract, free agency, and possibly leaving Washington. This time, there were no threats about walking out of the press conference if anyone asked such questions like there were in spring training.
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This time, there was no place for him to go.
Is there pressure because it’s his “walk” year?
“No, not really,” Harper said. “Every year is the same year, I go into every single game trying to help my team win. I think every year is a high-pressure situation for me no matter what. Could be a walk year. Could be the middle-of-a-contract year or at the end of my career. Every year is the same for me. I just go out there and perform the best that I can, the best of my abilities, and that’s it.”
He was asked about playing someplace else next year.
“That’s always a possibility,” he said. “I think everyone knew that at the beginning of the year. It’s possibly my last year in D.C. … There is no elephant in the room, everyone knows that. I’m not really focused on that. I’m focused on what I can do to help the team win, and I look forward to doing that.”
No elephant in the room? Harper came to his press conference in West Palm Beach riding Dumbo.
So much talk of pressure, with Harper brushing off any suggestion of it.
I asked, given that he has been under so much scrutiny from such a young age – on the cover of Sports Illustrated at the age of 16 — could he even recognize pressure and if it was affecting him?
And then Harper, in one of the all-too-rare moments that we hardly see from him anymore, revealed something real about himself.
He told us about the pressure he felt when he made the bold move of leaving high school after his sophomore year, getting his GED and playing for the College of Southern Nevada at 16.
“I got absolutely dominated for two weeks prior to our opening season,” he said. “I’m 16 years old, I just got back from Team USA, about to turn 17. I got dominated for two weeks, got punched out 9 or 10 times in 12 at-bats against my own team. I sat there and thought to myself, ’Man, I’d like to go back to high school right now.’ I sat down and said to myself, ’You know what? I don’t want to do this. I want to go back to high school. I want to go enjoy those moments and do that.’
“But I knew I couldn’t do that,” Harper said. “So I sat down and said, ’You’ve got to cowboy up.’”
He said he knew the things he had to do.
“A week later we started our fall ball season, and I went deep in my first at-bat at Cashman Field. The rest was history, I guess you would say. But that moment … playing wood bats in junior college against guys 22 or 23 years old, was one of the most pressurized situations I’ve ever been in. If I don’t have a good year that year, I might never be playing baseball or have been drafted. It’s those moments who make you who you are.
“I’m 25 years old and I’m able to play this wonderful game of baseball every single day,” Harper continued. “What pressure do I have to feel? What pressure do I feel running out to right field every day? It’s the game that I love to play. I’m getting chills. There’s nothing better than going out there and putting on 34 and being Bryce Harper and loving the game that I play.”
If Harper leaves, that’s the Bryce Harper we will miss, the Harper who says he planned on listening to Otis Redding before the Home Run Derby, the Harper talking about his admiration for Josh Gibson after visiting the Roberto Clemente Museum in Pittsburgh last week.
We don’t see that Harper much anymore.
Maybe it was the big stage that brought down the defenses and let Bryce be Bryce again. We would love to more of it before he is gone.
⦁ Thom Loverro hosts his weekly podcast “Cigars & Curveballs” Wednesdays available on iTunes, Google Play and the reVolver podcast network.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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