Baseball is a sport where you’re considered a success if you fail 70 percent of the time, so it’s understandable that emotions will run high at times. It’s important to keep them in check, though, and that’s something that Washington Nationals phenom Bryce Harper needs to learn quickly.
According to Amanda Comak of the Washington Times, Harper needed 10 stitches last night after slamming his bat into a wall in the dugout only to have it come back and hit him above his left eye. Harper had a rough night, as he went 0-for-5 and struck out three times, but the 19-year-old has to realize that bad games are going to happen once in a while.
He had been playing quite well since being called up two weeks ago and the Nationals have continued to roll, but Harper simply lost his cool. Washington beat the Cincinnati Reds quite easily by a score of 7-3 despite Harper’s poor game. However, it’s no surprise that Harper’s tantrum has been the biggest talking point.
“I just got caught up in the moment,” Harper said, “blood still staining the hair on the back of his head after he spent much of the seventh and eighth innings wiping it off his face.
“I want to do so well. It just got me.”
While it’s nice to see that Harper has a passion for the game and deeply cares about being the best player that he can possibly be, he also needs to act like a professional. Perhaps those antics were tolerated when he was dominating the competition in high school, college and the minor leagues, but now that he’s in the majors with the big boys, he has to carry himself better.
Emotions get the best of players from time to time, but for Harper to get this worked up after only being in the big leagues for two weeks, it has to throw up some red flags about his temper. There have been plenty of great players with short fuses over the years. Former Cincinnati Reds and New York Yankees outfielder Paul O’Neill comes to mind, but even he was careful about how he expressed himself.
Had Harper just hit the wall with the bat and not injured himself, then nobody would have given it a second thought. The fact that he was so reckless that he hurt himself is an issue, though. The Nationals already have a lot of money invested in Harper and had he suffered a concussion or some other debilitating injury, it would have been awful for him and the organization.
Although manager Davey Johnson said that he thought Harper would miss a couple games due to the mishap, Harper contradicted that thought, according to Comak.
“I think I’m good,” he said, adding that he never felt woozy or dazed and didn’t undergo a concussion test. “[The] doctor said I could play, so I’m going to play.”
If Harper’s assessment is accurate, then he dodged a bullet. Harper is still just a kid, so it’s easy to understand why he may not have the best judgment, but when it comes to playing in the majors, it’s important to mature quickly. Whether he knows it or not, Harper is already the face of the franchise along with Stephen Strasburg, and he can’t go bloodying it up by making poor decisions.
Harper looks like he has all the tools to be one of the best in the game, but there are going to be plenty more 0-for-5 nights along the way. Hopefully, next time he refrains from throwing a tantrum altogether, or at the very least does it a lot more carefully.
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