On September 27, with the team on the cusp of elimination from playoff contention, the fiery closer apparently got into an argument with this year’s best player: 22-year old wonder kid Bryce Harper.
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Cherry, co-host of the popular “Coach’s Corner” segment on “Hockey Night in Canada”, said Papelbon shouldn’t have confronted Harper publicly, but had no problem with the choke.
If you pay attention to baseball, you’re nearly certainly aware of Jonathan Papelbon’s attack on Bryce Harper in the Nationals’ dugout on Sunday. If he pitches well, great.
Perception: Harper does not hustle. He joined a rotation that already included the likes of Stephen Strasburg, Jordan Zimmermann, Doug Fister, and Gio Gonzalez, all of whom were capable of vying for an NL Cy Young Award.
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The Daily News reviews what the Mets’ current players were up to back in 2006. Which generation is the entitled one, exactly? And that’s a proper segue into another important example.
Asked about his job security in the same radio interview, Williams said he hasn’t talked to anybody about it because he’s focused on the remaining games in the Nationals’ lost season. Harper jogged to first base after grounding back to the pitcher and was pulled from the game. He reached the base before the ball was caught. If the ball had been dropped, Harper would have been safe.
The effort put forth by Harper, as Adam Kilgore so astutely noted, was far from offensive, not worthy of a snide remark, let alone an assault.
In baseball, it’s called eyewash. “(But) you could see by the way we weighted the disciplinary actions (that) we felt who was more at fault than the other”. His ERA had jumped nearly two full points, to the 3.44 mark, by the time of his shutdown. With that talent comes responsibility to the fans and most importantly the players he plays the game of baseball with. Papelbon and Harper then scrapped in the Nationals’ dugout, with Pap lunging at Harper’s throat. Desmond beats him by 0.5 miles per hour, Taylor by.05.
Major League Baseball officials did not comment on the play itself, but they agreed that Papelbon’s harsh treatment of Harper was definitely uncalled for.
So if you need him, Papelbon will be on the pine, grinding his teeth, cursing every invisible force and element in the world that has conspired to put him in this position. And former major league pitcher Dirk Hayhurst writes about the ridiculousness of the unwritten rules and veteran players’ inclination to enforce them, whatever they actually are.
But that’s not what people are talking about around the country where they’re discussing the Nationals.
No doubt all that is true. They know he is a big personality with a big ego and accept it because that’s pretty much the baseball archetype. Harper, though, said afterward he was scheduled to be off Monday. Chip away the impetuous, judgmental, foolish side of Papelbon, and he falls into that category just the same. He called the violent explosion in the dugout “a public viewing” for a dead team this season, “one of the worst professional team failures in D.C. sports in a generation”.
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One Washington fan tweeted the Nationals’ Twitter account Monday, telling the team he’ll donate 0 to a charity of the team’s choice if they cut the 34-year-old closer by the end of the day.
