Harper aims to be baseball’s Namath

Washington Post columnist Jason Reid didn't take long to get to the point of his Tuesday column on Nationals minor league phenom and Las Vegas native Bryce Harper.

The first paragraph pretty much summed up his feelings on Harper's biggest obstacle to making the big league roster out of spring training this season.

"Bryce Harper needs to grow up," Reid wrote. "When you're the future of the franchise, being 19 will only get you so far. Sometimes, you need to show maturity beyond your years."

While questions about Harper's maturity are nothing new -- after all, he is still just 19 -- a new wave of criticism has bubbled up in Washington after Harper gave an interview with MLB.com last week, basically saying he hoped to follow the model of Joe Namath as far as having a great deal of success on the field and living life the way he wants to off of it.

"He was in the style, he did all those commercials, things like that. He loved it. I think that's huge. That's one side of me that I like," he told MLB.com. "I'm not your typical, 'Hey, I'm going to be Johnny Good.' You are a baseball player. ... I'm going to have fun off the field, too."

Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo acknowledges in the column concerns about Harper's cockiness and maturity, but adds he is a good kid.

"We're not glossing over it," Rizzo told Reid. "We're not just saying that he's a 19-year-old kid and that he's making typical 19-year-old mistakes. He's a different case. He's a special-case scenario. This guy is in the public eye. When this guy tweets it out, or says something, it can go viral. There's a difference here. We recognize it.

"There's not a malicious bone in his body. Now, there's a cocky bone in there. And there's an ego bone. And there are other bones. But there's not a malicious bone in his body."

The bigger concern is preventing Harper from acquiring a Namath-inspired nickname.

Pennsylvania Avenue Bryce just doesn't have the ring of Broadway Joe.

■ SIZE DOESN'T MATTER -- Former Memphis basketball player Roburt Sallie is disputing reports he was released from his Spanish pro team for using the late-night infomercial product Extenze.

Sallie told Garry Parrish of CBSSports.com he was actually taking "Black Ant," which is for potency, and not Extenze, which allegedly adds size.

Club officials were supposedly worried Sallie would test positive because of the increased testosterone levels.

"I don't have a problem with it, that I've taken a male-enhancement pill before," he told Parrish. "And I'm pretty sure 95 percent of males in their lifetime have taken it. Do I take it regularly? No I don't. It's something I tried, it's my personal business, and I'm proud to say I did it."

Since performance-enhancers are usually associated with a different sport, we'll try to explain this delicately in baseball terms.

Sallie wasn't trying to acquire a bigger bat, he was just hoping to add some more pop to the one he was already using.

COMPILED BY ADAM HILL
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL