[Editors’ note: This story was originally published on Oct. 22, 2022, the night before Bryce Harper hit his fifth home run of the playoffs Sunday to help send Philadelphia to its first World Series since ’09.]
Bryce Harper spent most of his major league career trying to play the role of Bryce Harper, like John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. As the rare baseball rookie who arrived as a celebrity, he had to live up to expectations and image. He spent his first six years on the clock toward free agency and measured against Mike Trout. And when he signed with the Phillies, a team with six straight losing seasons, he had to be big enough to sell tickets and drag a franchise back to respectability.
Something remarkable has happened in the past two weeks. It is not only that Harper is slashing .410/.439/.872 in the postseason. It also is that Harper is playing unburdened. The Phillies have become such a collective force of willpower that Harper no longer must play himself in his own movie.
“Honestly, the best way I can put it is that it feels like the way I was playing baseball when I was younger,” Harper says after NLCS Game 4, in which this rumbling avalanche that is Philadelphia subsumed the Padres, 10–6, even after San Diego took leads of 4–0 and 6–4. “It’s winning for the team, like when I was playing on Team USA [at 17]. The only thing that mattered was winning for the name on the front. It wasn’t about me. It was about the team coming together with the same purpose: to win.
“When you play here in this environment, where the fans are so great, it’s even more about the collective will. It’s about 45,000 fans and 26 players coming together with a common purpose. Honestly, that’s all I feel right now. I’m not thinking about anything else.”
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Phillies teammate Kyle Schwarber, who is that good-natured high school football captain who never grew up, has been riding shotgun with Harper on this journey. It was Schwarber and his goofy, down-to-earth honesty that sold Harper on what it means to be the best teammate possible.
“He’s not thinking about himself,” says Philadelphia hitting coach Kevin Long. “And it’s very rare that he doesn’t have to think about himself. It’s very rare, at least in the time I’ve been with him.
“The reason this is taking him back to when he was younger is that he was truly part of a team then. That’s what he feels like now. It took a long time. It was hard to break out of that role and get him into this team mode.”
Every Harper at bat is a marvel of technical brilliance and focus.
“Different approaches, different setups, different pitches, he has every shot in the bag,” says Phillies first baseman Rhys Hoskins.
Here are the pitches for his past six hits: sinker (95 mph), sinker (91), cutter (90), changeup (81), curve (72), four-seamer (93). Twice he broke the Padres in Game 4. In the first inning he knocked woeful San Diego starter Mike Clevinger from the game with a ringing double to pull Philadelphia within 4–3. In the fifth, he snapped a 6–6 tie by slashing a run-scoring double off Sean Manaea, a lefty slinger. Long had talked to Harper before the at bat about using a two-strike approach against the lefthander—spread the legs and simplify the swing—and Harper did precisely that for his knock.
“His focus is laser focus right now,” Long says. “He’s precise with everything. His routine today, I knew before the game he was going to be incredible. He didn’t mis-hit a ball. Not one. You know with Bryce. The day before, he was a little off. He went 1-for-4. Today, he was precise.”
Each time when Harper reached second on a double, he stuck his chest out and pulled his hands away from it, showcasing “Phillies” across it the way Superman does his “S” insignia.
“I got it from [Edmundo] Sosa,” he says. “I thought it was cool. It’s like being a kid again, except now instead of ‘USA’ it says ‘Phillies.’”
When Harper was a free agent, he told his agent, Scott Boras, to forget the usual bells and whistles of contracts. No opt-outs. Tired of the six-year countdown to free agency, Harper wanted a long-term home, if for nothing other than to play without worry and chatter about where he was going next, a weight he found tedious. He also wanted a long-term home to start a family. He and his wife, Kayla, have a son Krew, 3, and a daughter, Brooklyn, 2. Boras delivered a 13-year, $330 million deal.
For better or worse, he was married to Philadelphia. In his first two years he posted a .903 OPS and missed only seven games. In his third year he won his second MVP. But in those three years the team did no better than two games over .500.
“He was going to win the MVP this year, too,” Long says.
Harper was slashing .318/.385/.599 when he was hit by a 97-mph fastball from Blake Snell, breaking his left thumb. He missed 52 games. When he came back in late August, his power was gone. He slashed .227/.325/.352.
“When he came back, he needed every bit of that time,” Long says. “He probably needed the postseason more than anything.”
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Harper went hitless in the first playoff game, but since then has hit in nine straight with 10 extra-base hits. Long says Harper has gone “next level” with focus and performance. What does that look like?
“It’s just … there’s no … I mean, he’s going to do something special,” Long says. “That’s all I can tell you. I know his swing is going to be right, and it’s going to be compact and there’s probably going to be some damage involved in it. He doesn’t miss when he’s doing this. He uses all of the field, and he hits any pitch that they throw.”
When I ask Harper to explain this zone of hitting, he says, “I honestly am not thinking about anything else but what I need to do at that moment to win. Get my foot down in time and go. I haven’t stepped back. Haven’t analyzed anything. It’s literally just ‘Get in the box and get to work.’ It really is that simple. And that’s why it’s been so much fun. This has been everything I could have hoped for. Even better because this is such a great group of guys I’m lucky enough to play with.”
Harper turned 30 a week ago. He already has won two MVPs, been named to seven All-Star teams and is one of only three players with 250 homers, 800 walks and 100 stolen bases before turning 30. The only others with power, patience and speed at those elite levels at such a young age are Mickey Mantle and Trout. He has built an elite résumé as a pure, great hitter, something that can get lost in his celebrity.
The postseason has put the spotlight on him. But now he shares it with Schwarber, who is hitting home runs into upper decks and shrubbery, and Rhys Hoskins and Jean Segura, who can alternate between bumbling fielders and clutch hitters in a matter of minutes, and J.T. Realmuto, the indefatigable catcher, and Dave Dombrowski and Rob Thomson, the scriptwriter and director to this entertaining Philadelphia story.
The Phillies are 4–0 at home this postseason and 26–9 since July 27. Going to a Phillies game at Citizen Bank Park is like going to your all-time best rock concert. It’s going to be loud, and you know you’re going to have a good time. The palpable angst, even disdain, that permeated this franchise for more than a decade has been swept clean by the euphoria that this is a team of destiny. Starting with the wild-card series win over St. Louis, the Phillies seem to have been propelled forward, like twirling a rock on a string and suddenly, with all that centrifugal force exploding, letting it go. Harper is riding this energy as much as anyone.
“What is he showing you this postseason?” I ask Long.
“He’s the best player in the game,” Long says. “It’s the reason why he’s won two MVPs. There is not an at bat that I really haven’t liked. He’s got that switch, and that switch is on right now. He’s a bad man to have up at the plate right now. He really is.”
On Saturday night, Harper went to bed knowing a win in his next game, Game 5 today, would catapult him into the first World Series of his career, and the first for the Phillies in 13 years. Just four years into his 13-year contract, Harper is one win away from bringing a pennant back to Philadelphia.
“How will you sleep?” I ask him.
“Good. Really good,” he says. “I’ll put Krew to bed and sleep just fine myself. I’m in a good place right now and just want to stay there.”
