On Seeing Elvis in Florida

Bryce Harper’s appearance in right field at Osceola County Stadium Thursday night occasioned a rush of fans to the wall alongside that would have made Elvis blush.  A fan beside me said it, “The king is in the house again.”  The stadium is the Astros’ spring home, but the hero carrying the scarf of the princess into battle belonged to the visitors–the Washington Nationals–who saw this scene a year earlier when many of the same fans queued for sightings of Stephen Strasburg.

Spring Training is a time when hope trumps every nagging reality, when journeyman players from Syracuse hope a hot streak can etch their name onto the roster going north.  It is a time and place where dreams are made and where they almost always vanish. But Bryce Harper is not a dream. He is ticketed now for the minors, but after watching him this past week come into several games with the big club in the late innings, there is no denying he is the real deal.  He has yet to prove that he can carry his hero the Mick’s lingerie, but he has gained every right to try.

Harper fits amazingly well into a reality that Ian Desmond stressed to me before the afternoon game against the Mets.  Harper was tucked away from view while the young shortstop stressed the Nationals’ new and determined commitment to more aggressive base running, to smarter play in general.  It showed during the game when Desmond battled long into the count to get a bloop single into left center with Joey Cora on first base.  Desmond took second on the throw to third after Cora hustled to third.  The ball was right in front of him, but Cora kept right on running.  It was the kind of heads up play that Desmond had promised will become common place.  They both scored on Jayson Werth’s liner into the gap and those two runs were the difference as Washington hung on to beat the New York Mets, 6-5.

In the night game against the Astros, Bryce Harper appeared in the seventh inning and in his first at bat he hit an almost identical bloop single into the same spot in shallow left center that Desmond had found in the afternoon game.  Harper exploded out of the box and did not stop until he was sliding head first into second base, just beneath the tag for a hustle double.  The uber-fan beside me enthused: “He looks like he has only one speed, all out, all the time.”

In the field the youthful Harper was put to the test immediately.  The former catcher had a bullet laced over his head toward the wall.  But getting a great jump and a great read on the ball, Harper ran the drive down with the same skillful application of force and will that he showed on the base path.

Harper suddenly was the face of a new team ethos committed to all out, heads up baseball.  It is a new concept for the Washington Nationals and it may take time for that fire to catch.  In the same game, an inning before Harper’s scratch double, Jerry Hairston sat on second when Wilson Ramos beat the ball into the ground—a swinging bunt fielded by the onrushing third baseman who left the bag untended.  When the dust had cleared, Hairston was still sitting there glued to the second base bag.  Memo to Hairston: watch Harper and Desmond closely then adjust accordingly.

Harper lost the game in the bottom of the ninth when his aggressive throw skidded across the infield to no one in particular and allowed the winning run to trot home.  It was a rookie play although you will see it in the majors all too often.  But Harper aspires to a niche where only the ideal throw rockets into a waiting glove accompanied by oohs and aahhs of the crowd.  He may get there, but it will not hurt him to find how his teammates learned to play the game on long bus rides to quaint villages in North Georgia.

My trip this spring to the Washington Nationals camp at Space Coast Stadium was a short one, but seeing the new face of the team was more cheering than anything I have seen recently.  It is easy to get caught up in the spring enthusiasm, to dream the same dream with the Syracuse journeyman.  But Michael Morse is only a season away from playing his way onto the roster and this spring he is playing his way into the starting lineup.  Finding players like Michael Morse may mean the difference between hapless and hopeful for Washington.

New trends could be seen among the front office staff staying in my hotel who promised that the Nationals learned important lessons last year with Stephen Strasburg.  “Harper will be different,” they said.  No truer words were spoken, but they promised that the Nationals will not keep Bryce Harper as the same kind of bubble boy that Strasburg became.  Harper will be more accessible.

The Nationals look like they will be different as well. Spring stats mean nothing, but the team is winning games against teams who have owned them in the past.  They have beaten the Marlins three times this spring and the Fish have had their way with the Nationals every season since 2005.  They have beaten the Mets and the Yankees every time they have played as part of a convincing winning record that contrasts favorably with the horrid 0-11 start to spring training last season that carried into an equally lamentable April.

No, Harper is not Elvis. The baseball I saw Bryce Harper and Washington playing in Florida this spring is something very real.  There are still a few warts, but then there are young players like Danny Espinosa who Desmond said is poised for a breakout season.  There is Michael Morse and Jordan Zimmermann both of whom have  worked hard and deserve the swagger they carry this spring that belies anything but hard-nosed baseball.  These are cocky kids not unlike a young raw kid who walked into the offices of Sam Phillips at Sun Records on his way to someplace special.  Will the Nationals be everything that Ian Desmond is hoping?  You just never know.  It is why they play the games.