Bryce Harper booed mercilessly by Nationals fans, but gets the last word
WASHINGTON – The setting was familiar, but everything else was different as Bryce Harper waited for the pitch from former teammate Max Scherzer.
For the first time at Nationals Park, he was batting in the top of the first inning, not in the home half. And wearing the uniform of the Philadelphia Phillies – thanks to a mammoth 13-year, $330 million contract he signed with the Nats’ NL East rival a little over a month earlier.
The reception from the majority of the 35,920 fans in attendance was predictable. And loud.
"I heard the boos," Harper said later. "For me, that’s part of sports. That’s part of the game."
Minutes earlier, the scoreboard at Nationals Park played a video tribute to Harper’s seven seasons in Washington – seven seasons that included four division titles, an MVP award in 2015 and a Home Run Derby title last July.
Harper stood silently in the visitors’ dugout, watching seven years of his life pass before his eyes.
A 41-minute rain delay before the game’s first pitch only added to the anticipation.
As he waited in the on-deck circle after Andrew McCutchen’s leadoff single, the boos resumed.
At 7:48 p.m., Harper stepped into the batter’s box with two runners on and nobody out.
He tapped the plate with his bat and looked out at Scherzer – “One of the best pitchers in all of baseball,” he opined pregame – and the rain-soaked crowd rose to its feet. The boos continued.
"You don’t know what to expect as a player," Scherzer said afterward. "For what he did for this organization, I didn’t know how the fans were going to react. It was a real loud, rowdy crowd tonight against him.
Scherzer fired a 96 mph fastball over the outside corner. Strike one.
The boos turned to cheers.
A swinging strike brought even more cheers, but Harper worked the count even.
On 2-2, Scherzer tried something different. A changeup. Harper took a mighty swing.
And missed.
"I was just kinda feeding off the atmosphere of the crowd," Scherzer said. "He’s a great hitter and you have to make great pitches to get him out."
The cheers erupted as Harper walked slowly back to the visitors’ dugout.
One gone. In more ways than one.
“It’s always going to be a tough at-bat going up against Max," Harper said. "2-2 changeup, nasty. 3-2 cutter, nasty."
But Harper would have his moment.
After striking out a second time in the third inning, he rose to the occasion.
Scherzer tried to get him to chase a 1-2 curveball in the fifth, but Harper was right on top of it – drilling a double into the right field corner.
"I was able to get him a couple times, but you make a pitch over the middle of the plate and he's able to get the bat to it and was able to hit a double," Scherzer said.
"It will be fun to continue to compete against him."
One inning later against left-handed reliever Matt Grace, Harper delivered an RBI single to give the Phillies a 6-0 lead. By that point, the boos were less obvious as Nationals fans began heading for the exits and Phillies fans who made the trip down I-95 could be heard chanting, “M-V-P! M-V-P!”
The only real drama left was what would happen in Harper’s final at-bat.
Facing veteran right-hander Jeremy Hellickson in the top of the eighth, Harper did what he did 92 other times at Nationals Park.
He hit a home run.
This one put an exclamation point on Harper’s homecoming, a 458-foot blast into the second deck in right field punctuated by an emphatic bat flip -- toward the home dugout where he spent the last seven seasons.
The boos were still there. They just weren't so loud anymore.
"I just tried to remember the city of Philadelphia is sitting back at home cheering and screaming and yelling at their TV happy as heck I’m a Philadelphia Phillie," Harper said.
As Harper and his new teammates walked off the field celebrating an 8-2 victory -- their fourth in a row to open the season -- his pregame words seemed even more appropriate.
“I’m excited for this next chapter.”
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