Phenom Harper hardly a ‘bad guy’

It is human nature, I suppose, for those who do not "have it all" to harbor resentment and contempt for those who do. This is why I have never much cared for Brad Pitt.

The baseball equivalent of Brad Pitt might be somebody like A-Rod. Or on the amateur level, somebody like Bryce Harper.

Harper is the College of Southern Nevada's 17-year-old wunderkind who has had each of baseball's so-called five tools -- hitting for average, hitting for power, running speed, arm strength and fielding ability -- in his box since he was a zygote. He does these things so well that Sports Illustrated put him on the cover of its magazine after his sophomore year in high school.

This, I suppose again, might make anybody who has ever tried in vain to hit the cutoff man in an American Legion game somewhat envious.

It might also explain why a scouting website called BaseballProspectus.com climbed the stairs to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository last week and tried to assassinate young Bryce's character.

Author Kevin Goldstein had a lot of nice things to say about Harper's baseball ability, stating that he far and away is the best prospect available in June's free-agent draft. But he closed with a high, hard one.

"It's impossible to find any talent evaluator who isn't blown away by Harper's ability on the field, but it's equally difficult to find one who doesn't genuinely dislike the kid. One scout called him among the worst amateur players he's ever seen from a makeup standpoint, with top-of-the-scale arrogance, a disturbingly large sense of entitlement, and on-field behavior that includes taunting opponents. "He's just a bad, bad guy," said one front-office official. How this plays into the negotiation or future evaluation is yet to be determined, as history has shown that the bigger talent a player is, the more makeup issues teams will deal with ..."

Whoa, Cheech Marin. That's pretty harsh. Another website called TheBigLead.com rehashed the Baseball Prospectus blog under the headline, "Everybody Hates Bryce Harper."

I don't hate Bryce Harper. Maybe that's because I've actually spoken to The Kid.

The Bryce Harper I had met reminded me of Richie Cunningham, if Richie Cunningham could hit home runs that travel 570 feet. He was pleasant to a fault, showed me religious passages he had inscribed on the bill of his cap and practically started blushing when I asked if he had a girlfriend. Granted, that was a couple of weeks before Sports Illustrated put him on the cover and grown men started sending him stuff in the mail to autograph that is destined to wind up on eBay.

Arrogant? Entitled? Bad guy? They must be talking about the Bizarro World Bryce Harper. Or Lenny Dykstra.

Tim Chambers, Harper's coach for a few more weeks at CSN, said he thinks this smear campaign might have stemmed from his decision to shield Harper from the media -- which has resulted in a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth by people in my business -- and from a recent series in which the Western Nevada bench jockeys were getting on Harper in the manner the Gashouse Gorillas got on Bugs Bunny. So when Harper hit another moon shot, he took his sweet ol' time circling the bases, displaying a bit of swagger. This much, Chambers admits.

The next day, the needling was even more severe. So when Harper threw a seed from the outfield in an attempt to nail a runner making a wide turn at first base, he sort of bowed in mock appreciation. The umpires considered this taunting and threw him out of the game.

If this is taunting, Dykstra's junior college career would have consisted of about six at-bats.

In the grand scheme, I doubt that a hatchet job by an obscure Internet website is going to influence major league baseball general managers and/or impact Harper's potential to make an obscene amount of money by playing baseball.

On Monday, I called him, not so much to quote him for this column, but just to see how he was holding up under incredible scrutiny and to ask if he thought achieving even more success had changed him in any way.

"No," said The Kid, his voice more pleasant than the weather outside. "Still the same guy."

The only thing I can figure out is those Internet guys must have Bryce Harper confused with Brad Pitt.

Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowkis@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352.