Bryce Harper hit the century mark in home runs, and he did it in style.
The 23-year-old reigning National League MVP hit the 100th homer of his career, a grand slam, in the third inning of Thursday’s 6-2 win over the Atlanta Braves.
It was the Washington Nationals star’s first career grand slam, which cleared the wall at Nationals Park:
Harper’s grand slam came a half inning after the Braves took a 1-0 lead in the top of the third.
After a sacrifice bunt from Stephen Strasburg resulted in an out at second base, back-to-back hits by Anthony Rendon and Chris Heisey loaded the bases for Harper with two outs.
On a 1-0 pitch from Julio Teheran, Harper connected on a 91 mile-per-hour fastball and launched it over the right field wall for his third homer and ninth RBI on the young season.
The Las Vegas native became the eighth-youngest player to reach the 100-homer mark, per Baseball Tonight. Mel Ott remains the quickest to reach that mark at 22 years, 132 days old. Harper will turn 24 in October.
Sportsnet Stats tweeted out this graphic featuring the entire list, as Harper missed legendary catcher Johnny Bench by 20 days:
Harper knew how close he was to the century mark in homers. He took to Instagram on Monday to show off his bats, which featured “100” emoji decals:
Harper has evolved into one of the best players in baseball, with proof coming last year in his winning the MVP Award. The three-time All-Star has played at least 100 games in every year since coming to the majors in 2012. Last season was the first time Harper hit more than 30 homers in a campaign.
He’s still more than 600 homers away from the top mark all time, but if he continues to stay healthy and play a large number of games, he could challenge Barry Bonds’ total by the time his career is up.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com.
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