ANALYSIS/OPINION
I guess even baseball’s Minister of Fun has his limits when it comes to making baseball fun again.
Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper – who crowned himself baseball’s Minister of Fun when he declared before the start of the season that he was on a mission to “make baseball fun again” – says he won’t be taking part in one of baseball’s fun events at the upcoming All-Star festivities, the Home Run Derby.
“I just don’t want to, plain and simple,” Harper told reporters Tuesday. “I just don’t really want to do it. I just want to enjoy my time, sit on the side and watch it a little bit.”
Is Bryce Harper tired? Isn’t that what he accused the game of being in his ESPN the Magazine interview in March when he said, “Baseball’s tired. It’s a tired sport, because you can’t express yourself. You can’t do what people in other sports do. I’m not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it’s the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.”
It may be a circus exhibition, but the Home Run Derby is a showcase for just that – “flair.”
SEE ALSO: Bryce Harper leads four Nationals selected to All-Star Game in San Diego
Harper, voted one of the starters in Tuesday’s All-Star Game, joined by teammates Daniel Murphy, Wilson Ramos and Stephen Strasburg on the National League roster, is just 23. Has his time come and gone already from the Home Run Derby? He called it a “fun” event, but said, “I just don’t care for it.”
Did Harper mean when he started his “Make Baseball Fun Again” with hats and T-shirts that he just wanted to make the game fun again for him?
“I don’t know, I don’t want to go out there and swing and swing and swing, I guess,” he said.
Maybe, just maybe, it would be fun for baseball fans to watch Bryce Harper swing and swing and swing; I guess.
Harper’s most recent statements call into question what he said last year when he bowed out of the Derby because he said his father, Ron, who was recovering from rotator cuff surgery, couldn’t pitch to him. “Not having Dad is a huge issue for me,” he told reporters last year.
Did he use his father’s injury as an excuse to hide his disdain for participating in the Home Run Derby?
None of this matters if Harper doesn’t tell the world before the start of the season that baseball is tired, and adopt this campaign to make the game fun again. No one would blame Harper for bowing out, for whatever reasons. But he was the one who claimed baseball was tired and in need of some flair and attention. After the Nationals season-opening win over Atlanta in April, Harper, according to ESPN.com, used the word “fun” five times in his postgame interview. Was that just a marketing campaign, or did he really mean it? If he meant it, why wouldn’t he then take part in an event that he himself called “fun” this week?
“I enjoyed watch (Todd) Frazier win it last year,” Harper told reporters, talking about last year’s Home Run Derby in Cincinnati, where Frazier plays.
Last year Harper told reporters that he would be in for the Home Run Derby when Washington hosts the All-Star Game in 2018. “I’ll do the Derby in 2018 here at Nats Park. No doubt about it.”
Now, though, there is doubt. Harper told reporters Tuesday that “I don’t know if I’m going to do it next year or the next or any other time ever.”
It would seem that the Minister of Fun is abdicating his duties.
Maybe Harper was in a funk because baseball wouldn’t let him have fun and use the special patriotic bat he had ready for July 4. Though he used one last year, Harper was told by Major League Baseball that it would violate the rules.
“One day I hope players in the @MLB can express the way they feel and give thanks to everybody that makes our lives possible and safe every single day through bats or cleats or anything to that point,” Harper wrote on Instagram with a photo of the bat in question. “No I will not be using this bat today to respect the rules of @MLB! #Merica.
“To the soldiers who keep our land safe and free, this was going to be for you, to tell the true story of the amazing life that I have growing up in such a beautiful country,” Harper wrote.
It was a wonderful sentiment.
Maybe baseball would let him use that bat in the Home Run Derby.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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