Bryce Harper was fined and suspended on Wednesday.
While Major League Baseball is at it, it should give him a big pat on the back as well.
The one-game suspension is just. Harper should also apologize for breaking a rule and so overtly cussing. But then he should say he’ll probably do it again, because he loves competing and he just might lose his mind every single time someone messes with his ability to do so.
And we should cherish him for it.
The reigning National League MVP is 23 years old, is a bit of a drama queen and emotional powder keg and is the best thing to happen to baseball since they started putting cork and rubber in the balls.
Harper is the player you love if he’s on your team and hate if he’s on the other team.
The loathing is understandable. He is a smirk with a bouffant, a swagger with smudged eye black.
He is also possessed of once-in-a-decade talent.
So …
Sorry, truth is, if you are interested in baseball’s welfare, you must appreciate Harper.
It’s OK if you have conflicting feelings about this, if you want to hate him even as you know you have to want him to continue to play and talk and be unabashedly Bryce Harper.
And, really, loving this guy shouldn’t be that difficult.
Harper plays the game the right way, even as he sometimes pushes the bounds of decency, such as yelling for all to see one of the most offensive two-word couplings in our language at an umpire.
If you’re offended by his sportsmanship, acknowledge it’s part of the package that makes him the best man in his sport.
Harper runs first to third like he’s headed to eat his only meal of the week. Like his making the team is dependent on his advancing two bases. Like God gave him only a Chris Denorfia portion of talent.
Harper throws himself around in the outfield to the extent his employer, the Washington Nationals, has talked to him about it. The Nats do, in fact, covet his staying healthy so they can make him the game’s highest-paid player.
And that swing. There’s nothing that can be said about that. It’s biblical. If Hemingway saw it and was asked to describe it via the written word, Papa would simply break down in tears.
All that is why Harper was justified in admonishing this past offseason a radio interviewer who suggested he would be baseball’s first $400 million man. Said Harper: “Don’t sell me short.” It was off-handed the way he did it, as if it were silly to think he wouldn’t receive far more.
The kid’s confidence is as strong as his hair gel. He wears his emotions on his sleeves. On his chest, his pant legs, his shoes, his cap. In that magnificent hair.
It’s an aura he’s not shy about sharing.
Harper’s demonstrativeness is abruptly so not baseball, and he has been derided by fellow players and commentators.
He’s not about the unwritten rules. He’s about being in your face. And this gentleman’s game needs a little brute in it if it is to continue to thrive, perhaps even if it is to survive.
I wrote at the end of the 2014 season that baseball was dying. It was not a prediction of the game’s imminent demise, but a warning that continued poor habits would make it terminal. The column focused largely on the interminable time of games.
I love baseball, probably more than most Americans under the age of 50. I am, in fact, a traditionalist. I’m happy replay is proving to be a joke, because I hated the idea of it based solely on my appreciation of the fallibility of umpires being part of this magnificent game. Turns out, replay is not just a mockery but also counter to baseball’s smart focus on expedience.
Getting rid of replay needs to happen. Starting more games earlier than 7 or 7:30 p.m. would also be a good idea to enable younger and/or working fans to attend/watch games and still get to sleep before midnight.
So, too, the game on the field being as flashy as what happens on the video boards wouldn’t hurt.
I do tend toward appreciating LaDainian Tomlinson acting like he’d been in the end zone before and sometimes find it belligerent that Cam Newton acts as if he’s discovered a new world every time he gets there. But I love the idea that the best way to keep a player from celebrating is to keep him from doing the thing he’s celebrating.
Harper does a lot of things worthy of celebration.
(The way to keep him from doing so, evidently, is to walk him 13 times in 19 plate appearances, as the Cubs did over the weekend)
The kids these days seem to like celebration. And confrontation is evidently sexy.
Anecdotally, the two young ladies at the grocery store on Tuesday were speaking about Harper in glowing terms. They were, uh, excited by him.
We don’t need to dissect numbers about popularity and marketability of athletes in various sports. We know where baseball stands. Its demographics are about the same as the printed newspaper. A relatively wealthy and educated group — but not as long for this earth as is necessary for continued financial flourishing. Consider Harper to be the equivalent of a digital platform.
Baseball and the people who love it need to embrace and promote Harper (and Yasiel Puig and Jose Bautista and all the other young players pimping and primping with the talent that makes it OK).
The game can act like the old man it is and yell about the whippersnappers’ rock music, or it can dance with Harper.
What Harper did Monday was wrong.
He was ejected in the ninth inning while in the dugout, ostensibly for complaining about a called third strike on teammate Danny Espinosa, and then came on the field two pitches later to celebrate Clint Robinson’s walk-off homer — after he detoured a few steps to point and scream curse words at home plate umpire Brian Knight.
Harper broke the rules by coming back on the field after being tossed, and he cussed at an umpire.
Let’s hope MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred delivered the suspension and fine notice personally, with a wink and an entreaty:
You keep being you, Bryce.