When you are hurt while hustling in a basically meaningless game played in drizzle after a three-hour rain delay, maybe you deserve to catch a break. Bryce Harper, the Washington Nationals, MLB and baseball fans everywhere sure did.
The sun arose on Sunday morning and it shone on Harper. Brightly. Instead of a broken leg or a knee which required reconstructive surgery, or who knows what potentially career-altering injury, he merely had “a bone bruise,” according to Nats GM Mike Rizzo, after a chilling slip-and-flip while sprinting across a wet first-base bag. A sane guess, since nothing better is possible: He’ll miss a month.
“The good news is there’s no ligament or tendon damage, which is pretty remarkable in my mind just seeing the type of injury that he had,” said Rizzo of Harper’s gruesome incident. “Very significant bone bruise when he hyperextended the knee.
“Although we feel we’ve dodged a bullet . . . here with any long-term damage, the bone bruise is something of significance . . . We’ll treat him cautiously. We’re optimistic that he will be back by the end of the year,” said Rizzo, which, translated, means in time to be ready for the playoffs in 7½ weeks.
Even this prognosis left tough questions in its wake. Will Harper, who was a front-runner for his second NL most valuable player award, have long enough to regain the hitting form that brought him 29 homers, 87 RBI and a .326 average in just 106 games this year? Probably. But Harper is streaky and, at times, has to play himself into a comfortable balance at the plate which ignites a hot period.
Also, MLB made the decision to play in drizzle after a 3-hour, 1-minute delay. Baseball has played countless games after similar delays for generations, especially when a team is making its last visit to a city of the season and can’t easily make up the game before the regular season ends. But just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean there aren’t times when it is dumb.
The Giants are a lost, last-place team. The Nats have a 14½-game NL East lead. If there was ever a game that didn’t need to be played, and for which fans could have gotten their rain check, this would appear to check every box.
Neither Baker nor Rizzo had any problem with MLB’s decision. By the third inning, the drizzle had stopped and the field was in good condition. But not when Harper was hurt. “That’s baseball,” said Rizzo, adding that he believed in “the integrity of playing (the whole) 162-game season.”
My belief has long been that MLB primarily wants to save the gate more than the date; despite recognizing somewhat increased risk of injury, everybody hides behind bromides about how players know they should “be careful out there.”
If Harper had been badly hurt, perhaps MLB leaders and union officials would have had quiet discussions about how to set more sensible guidelines for such games. They shouldn’t waste that opportunity just because Harper is in one piece.
When his playing days are finally over someday, Harper may think to a half-dozen times when his career, the whole full length and brilliance of it, was spared, preserved from disaster and essentially kept intact to run its full course.
Harper will remember as a rookie he ran full speed, face first, into the outfield wall in Dodger Stadium. Lost his bearings, didn’t sense the warning track and then splat — he looked like a fly meeting its final swatter. Yet nothing much happened. That spring, he smashed a bat which recoiled, hit him in the head and drew blood. He got the nickname “Bam-Bam.” But also won rookie of the year.
Harper has always run in the red, which is part of his appeal to fans and, at times, an inspiration to teammates. It’s also part of the reason he will now miss significant playing time for the third time in six seasons with an injury that was incurred in a moment of admirable but not-entirely-essential hustle. His sub-Bryce ’16 season was also hampered by a nagging painful shoulder — more than a “ding,” but less than an injury that required postseason surgery.
Harper, a free agent after ’18, now has another data point on the list of risks that would come with a 10-year contract. Was this escape an example of how rugged and durable he is? Or how frequently he tests that ruggedness?
“Harp plays it — as we’ve said before — 100 miles an hour with his hair on fire,” said Rizzo. “That’s the way he’s going to play it throughout his career, and you can’t fault a player for going hard all the time.”
After rolling on the ground in pain for minutes and being helped off the field without putting weight on his leg, “Harper was prayin’, and I was prayin’,” said manager Dusty Baker. Yet after the game, Nats pitcher Edwin Jackson said it was “amazing that (Harper) was in good spirits and walking around.”
Some teams dodge bullets. The Nats, with the third-best record in MLB and a serious World Series chance in October, and Harper himself, appear to have dodged a howitzer shell.
This follows an odd season-long pattern for the Nats where bad injury luck has just enough perverse silver lining to make you wonder if, with hindsight, it’ll seem like preamble to a good last act. Or maybe you just have rocks in your head.
Now Harper crash lands. And the MRI exam comes back smiling.
For now, a perpendicular Harper is sufficient relief. If all this news takes a different shape in a few months, we can book the same room and discuss it again.