Sports figures are known to engage in a bit of hyperbole every now and then. We call LeBron James “King” even though he has yet to win a ring. Every hot prospect with a massive amount of potential is billed as “The Next <Fill in the Blank With Position Hall-of-Famer>”.
And while many of the comparisons can be outrageous — and often prove to be unfounded — occasionally one will prove so mind-numbingly bizarre that it forces you to re-read the quote just to make sure that you really read what you thought you had just read.
As such, I give you this gem from an upcoming piece by Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated from former big leaguer Tony Tarasco on the man you see above, the man, the myth, the legend that is current Harrisburg Senator Bryce Harper.
“Harper, a travel-baseball phenom out of Las Vegas at 10, an SI cover boy at 16 and a $9.9 million signee at 17, is the most well-known minor leaguer since Michael Jordan. But Jordan was a novelty, not a prospect. Harper is the most scrutinized prospect since….
“Jackie Robinson,” says Tony Tarasco, a former major leaguer and a Nationals minor league coordinator who has become Harper’s player-development Yoda. “You have to go back to Jackie Robinson to find anybody who goes through this much scrutiny. It wasn’t like this for [Stephen] Strasburg. Wasn’t like this for Alex Rodriguez.”
Jackie Robinson? Surely Doug Harris, the Nationals’ director of player development, with 21 years in pro ball as a player, scout and executive, would find a different comparable for Harper. Independent of Tarasco, Harris offered, “This is really unfair and it’s totally different, but if I can make a comparison to one guy that has been scrutinized like this, it would be Jackie Robinson. And it’s unfair because it was a different standard. He was under a microscope in an era when we didn’t have Internet, didn’t have cellphones.
“Now, Jackie Robinson had his life threatened. I’m not comparing Bryce to that. But as far as nonstop scrutiny? Absolutely. Day to day.”
Read that paragraph over again. Bryce Harper is, according to Tarasco, the most scrutinized prospect since Jackie Robinson.
With all due respect to Tarasco (who has accomplished far more in his life than I have in my own), to borrow a line from another legend, tennis’s John McEnroe, you cannot be serious.
Harper had every advantage that a kid could possibly have growing up, with seemingly nobody telling him he was anything but the second coming of…well, what I’m not entirely sure, but this kid has been lionized in every way, shape and form possible.
Harper has been heckled, sure, but it’s largely by people who are jealous of his place in the world. Visiting fans are known to razz him for the amount of money he makes, the absurd amount of hype surrounding a guy who has yet to wear a big league uniform, or the equally absurd size of his ego.
This is a guy who blows kisses at opposing pitchers after he hits home runs. Not only is he allowed to stay at the same hotels at his teammates, he could afford to significantly upgrade his room if he were so inclined. He is “The Chosen One” and everyone else is but a plebe in his kingdom. If his life were any more charmed, he’d be a walking lottery ticket, which is undoubtedly how some Nationals fans likely view him.
Now contrast that with Jackie Robinson.
Robinson’s career was held under the tiniest of microscopes of day one. He wasn’t allowed to stay in the same hotels as his teammates. Few were rooting for him to succeed because Robinson was breaking down racial barriers in a game that had until that point been whiter than a fresh snowfall. He faced down death threats, pitchers intentionally throwing at his head, and players sliding into him with their spikes up, anything to frighten a man who would forever change the game of baseball for the better.
And with all that happening around him, Robinson never lost his cool. He didn’t blow kisses at opposing pitchers, didn’t show anyone up. He shut his mouth, did his job and did it very, very well. He broke down barriers and helped jump start a social revolution in America. Harper, while a very good prospect, will never have that kind of an impact on either our culture or the game of baseball.
Prospects are scrutinized down the most minute detail all the time. Evidence of that can be found on message boards and websites far and wide devoted to chronicling the minutiae of the game.
And while Harper has been held under a microscope for the vast majority of his existence as a baseball player, he’s not he first or the last player to have to deal with that kind of attention.
In the 70s, a Texas high schooler named David Clyde became a baseball legend before throwing the first pitch of his career. In the late 80s, we were all told how Todd Van Poppel and Eric Anthony were going to revolutionize the game of baseball. The 90s brought the likes of Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Alex Rodriguez, and a host of others.
The technology has improved in the form of smart phones and high speed internet, but the general feeling remains the same. Fans of a team starved for success see a shiny new prospect and invest all their hopes and dreams into him, setting unrealistic expectations based on a handful of scouting reports and tape measure home runs.
Tarasco’s claim that “it wasn’t like this for Stephen Strasburg” is equally absurd. In fact, if anything, Strasburg set the bar for Nationals’ prospect hyping. Strasburg’s minor league starts appeared on national television and each appearance was breathlessly chronicled. He was supposed to breathe hope into a franchise seemingly lacking any semblance of it (sound familiar?).
By the time Strasburg eventually reached the Major Leagues, we knew everything about him short of his favorite flavor of ice cream, although I’m sure that wasn’t for a lack of some small town journalist asking him that question.
All this isn’t to say that Harper isn’t worthy of the attention. He has consistently shown flashes of brilliance throughout the course of his brief career, a ton of promise that perhaps he could, someday, breathe life back in to the Nationals’ fan base. But comparing him to Jackie Robinson is lazy at best and an insult to Robinson at worst.
