The Baseball Fan's Guide to Coveting Bryce Harper

 

Ever since Bryce Harper was drafted by the Nationals, it seems like baseball fans have been asking one question: When is Bryce Harper going to leave the Nationals?

To an extent, I get it. For the first several years after coming to D.C., the team was at best, a bunch of lovable losers. (Or in the case of guys like Lastings Milledge, Elijah Dukes and Nyjer Morgan, just losers.) At worst, it was a complete joke of a franchise. How many teams lose a GM because he's the subject of a federal investigation? How many teams sign a free agent (Adam Dunn) who says he only came here because he had no other options? How many teams have their manager quit mid-season? How many teams can't even correctly spell its own name on its star player's jersey?

Things have obviously gotten much (much, much, much, much, much, much, much) better since then. The team's gone from a perennial last place squad and playing in a stadium nicknamed Citizens Bank Park South, to a perennial World Series favorite. But despite this, there's still a perception that Washington is just a way station for Harper before he goes on to bigger and better things.

As a baseball fan, you yourself may be wondering where your favorite team stands in the Bryce Harper Sweepstakes (should said sweepstakes indeed end up taking place). Do you have a chance at getting him? Was that caller on your local sports talk radio station correct when he listed a bunch of reasons why Harper would be playing in your city in 2019? Let's find out!

If You're a Yankees Fan

1) The Yankees will simply buy Bryce Harper

The Good News: Yup, the Yankees will have the money to sign Bryce Harper. Because they're the Yankees.

The Bad News: The era of George Steinbrenner collecting elite players the way an obsessive compulsive guy collects baseball cards appears to be over. Hank and Hal Steinbrenner seem a lot more fiscally responsible than their dad. That's not to say they wouldn't love to throw a ton of money at Harper. Obviously, they will, if given the opportunity. But do you really get the sense that these guys have the same...entitled, arrogant, reckless, whatever you want to call it...attitude of "I don't care what it takes...sign him!" that their dad did? I don't.

More importantly than that, here's a fun fact that most Yankees fans seem to either be unaware of or conveniently choose to ignore: Ted Lerner, the owner of the Nationals, is rich. Like, really rich. I don't mean rich like, say, Jeff Loria, who's worth a paltry $500 million. Or John Henry, who at $1.6 billion, is just sort of rich. I mean really, really fucking rich. 

Yeah. Richer than the Steinbrenners. 

Now, just to be clear, no one is arguing that the Nationals are a more valuable franchise than the Yankees. But in terms of their respective owners' personal wealth, it's not even close. Forbes lists the Steinbrenners' current net worth as $3.1 billion. The Lerners are listed at $4.8 billion.

Does this mean that the Lerners are a lock to re-sign Harper? Of course not. All I'm saying is, if money is going to be your central argument as to why Bryce Harper in pinstripes is a preordained inevitability, make sure you have all the facts. There's not going to be a repeat of that scene from Moneyball where Brad Pitt sadly watches them take down the banners of all the players he couldn't afford to keep. The Nationals gave Jayson Werth stupid money just to make a point to the rest of the league. They signed Max Scherzer to an absurd contract when they already had the best rotation in baseball. You really think they won't spend to keep Harper?

2) Well, even still, the Nationals can't afford to keep all their impending free agents and Bryce Harper!

The Good News: You're right! They can't.

The Bad News: The Nationals are willing to let most or even all of them go, or else Mike Rizzo is bluffing like crazy.

Ian Desmond didn't think $90 million was enough? No problem. Rizzo went out and traded for Trea Turner. Bye, Ian.

Jordan Zimmermann would rather play closer to home? Fair enough. The Nats will just pencil in Lucas Giolito for a June 2016 debut. Also, that Joe Ross kid seems pretty good.

Denard Span is great. But so is Michael Taylor for a fraction of the salary.

Stephen Strasburg is going to cost a fortune? Probably, but if I had to bet right now, I'd say that'll be some other team's problem.

Additionally, just as Yankees fans enjoy listing all the bad contracts that'll be off the books by the time Harper hits free agency, Werth's contract will be history and Ryan Zimmerman's will be close to it, leaving Scherzer as the only National (as of now) with a crazy salary.

In other words, there should be plenty of money available. Plus, the whole MASN dispute will undoubtedly be resolved by then, most likely in a way favorable to the Nationals. So there'll be even more. Also, did I mention the Lerners are really rich?

3) The Yankees were Bryce Harper's favorite team when he was a kid

The Good News: You know, I've never been entirely clear on why this is relevant, but Yankees fans really seem hung up on it, so I'll just smile politely and nod.

The Bad News: So let me get this straight: When he was a child, a professional baseball player had a favorite baseball team. One that's different than the baseball team he currently plays for. That's amazing.

Look, I like Harper. But he's always come off as very much a bandwagon sports fan. (Which, to be fair, might well be expected of someone who grew up in a city without any professional teams.) Besides the Yankees, his other favorites growing up were Duke, the Cowboys and the Lakers. It doesn't get more bandwagony than that. I don't know if he was a soccer fan as a kid, but if he was, I imagine he liked whoever David Beckham was playing for at any given time.

Sentimentality is nice, but as athletes are always quick to remind us when it's contract negotiation time, sports is a business. LeBron grew up in Ohio. Didn't stop him from taking his talents to Miami when he decided that was best for his career. Ultimately, Harper will most likely sign with whatever team offers him the best combination of money and winning potential. The Nationals should be in a position to offer both in 2019.

4) Bryce Harper and Matt Williams don't get along

The Good News: There was a period in 2014 where this was most likely true.

The Bad News: You know what baseball players who don't get along with their managers don't tend to do? Compliment them a lot and perform special high-five rituals with them after hitting home runs.

Last season, Matt Williams, for whatever reason, did something dumb. He thought it would be a good idea to assert his authority over his new team by benching his star player for not hustling during a routine out, thus causing Harper a fair amount of public embarrassment. Other Nationals players said they supported the move. This was probably true. Mike Rizzo said he supported the move. I suspect this wasn't entirely true. Harper said he supported the move. This was most assuredly a lie.

It's telling that despite numerous instances since then of Nationals players not hustling, making mental errors, or just plain fucking up, no one else has ever been benched during a game. So either Williams realized his original approach to management wasn't a productive one or he was advised (ordered) by someone higher up to chill out. Regardless, it's been peaceful at Nats Park since then.

And let's be honest: In a battle between the coach and the star player, the coach never wins. If the team truly believes that Matt Williams is a serious impediment to re-signing Harper, he'll very quickly be found day drinking in that same bar Jim Riggleman was seen at after he quit.  

5) Scott Boras always lets his clients reach free agency, at which point the Yankees will pounce

The Good News: This is almost always true.

The Bad News: The key word there is "almost." It's not like Boras considers this to be religious dogma. He's said himself that it's not a hard and fast rule. If the Nationals offered Harper a better contract than the one the Marlins gave Giancarlo Stanton, you think Boras wouldn't drive Harper down to Nats Park himself to sign it?

A lot can happen between now and when Harper's a free agent. Harper could be seriously injured. He could regress. He could, against his agent's wishes, decide to sign a team friendly deal that gives the Nationals more flexibility to sign other players. So there are incentives not to wait and jeopardize what will undoubtedly going to be a record deal. Even if he does sign a huge contract now, he would still conceivably be in line for another one while still in his prime.

All it'll take is Ted Lerner waking up one morning, saying "Screw it," and deciding to write Harper a really, really big check. Probable? Not especially. But not completely nuts, either.

If You're a Red Sox Fan

The Good News: Simply in terms of payroll capability, I suppose you deserve to be part of the conversation.

The Bad News: If you want him, you're going to have to break the bank and outbid both the Nationals and the Yankees and God knows who else. Not somehow acquire him in a trade for Henry Owens and Allen Craig.

If You're a Dodgers Fan

The Good News: For now, this is just baseless speculation, but if it's not the Nationals and it's not the Yankees, it seems like the Dodgers would make the most sense. First and foremost, they have the money from the obscene TV deal they signed, and they're clearly not afraid to spend it on players. Second, the situation would seem to suit Harper's needs well: A team in a big media market that's poised to win a title, but also without a clear team leader, allowing him to slide into that role. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Los Angeles can offer something neither the Nationals or Yankees can: Proximity to home. Harper may like D.C. well enough, but shortly after every season ends, he's on a plane to Las Vegas. I'm not really sure what he does all winter since he doesn't gamble. But he seems to love it there.

The Bad News: Even the Dodgers' resources have limits. Getting into a bidding war with the Nationals and the Yankees seems insane. And it's not like the Dodgers aren't already competitive without him.

If You're a Rays, Blue Jays, Orioles, Royals, Twins, Tigers, White Sox, Indians, Astros, Rangers, Angels, Mariners, A's, Mets, Braves, Marlins, Phillies, Cardinals, Cubs, Pirates, Reds, Brewers, Giants, Padres, Diamondbacks or Rockies Fan

The Good News: Regardless of where he ends up playing, you'll be able to watch Bryce Harper on TV.

The Bad News: But he won't be signing with your team.

If You're a Nationals Fan

1) The Lerners Are rich, right?

The Good News: Very rich. I think I covered this.

The Bad News: There's a difference between having money and choosing to spend it. If there's a bidding war for Bryce Harper where both sides are fully engaged, I think the Nationals win. The Yankees will want him. The Nationals will need him.

And yet, something happened last winter that should have sent a chill down the spine of every Nats fan. The team and Scott Boras disagreed over whether Harper was eligible for arbitration and with it, a relatively small raise. The team played hardball. So did Harper and Boras, with Harper skipping NatsFest to make his point, which caused Rizzo to get uncharacteristically pissy. Both sides made up soon afterwards, but the damage was done.

I'm sure the team and Harper/Boras honestly each thought they were in the right. But if you're the Nats...who gives a shit? If you can make the cornerstone of your franchise happy by giving him a slight bump in pay, you do it.

The downside to Ted Lerner being filthy rich is how he came to make that money. He's a developer. Which means he reflexively tends to fight for every penny, even when he shouldn't. When Nats Park opened, the team refused to pay rent to D.C. for weeks because it found a few minor problems. A couple of years ago, when Lerner wanted to put a roof on the ballpark, he didn't go to Mayor Gray to talk logistics or ask permission to pay for it himself. He went looking for a $300 million taxpayer handout. For anyone else, these would be examples of insane behavior. For a developer, it's just another Tuesday.

It's possible that the Lerners will decide that they don't need Harper and let him go rather than pay him the hundreds of millions it would take to keep him. It's a scary thought and would defy all logic and reason. But if we're being honest, the possibility can't be discounted. Much has been written about the 89 year-old Ted Lerner wanting to win a World Series before he shuffles off this mortal coil. One wonders if the Nats doing so in the next year or two would make it more or less likely that he'd consider keeping Harper to be a priority.

2) He seems pretty happy here

The Good News: Every time Harper tweets a photo of him hanging out in D.C. (admiring the monuments, dropping by Sugar Shack on his way to the stadium, etc.) I get a nice fuzzy feeling. Some players have really embraced the community since coming here. Werth. Gonzalez. Scherzer. Span. Then you have guys like Strasburg, who seem indifferent, if not anxious to leave. So far, Harper seems to be more of the former than the latter.

The Bad News: You never really know. Some athletes grow to love their cities so much, they don't ever want to play anywhere else. I wouldn't say that Harper is among them. (Yet!)

3) Bryce Harper's said he wants to play for one team for his whole career

The Good News: He sure did! Yay, us!

The Bad News: Remember before when I questioned the idea that just because Harper liked the Yankees as a kid, that somehow mattered? Unfortunately, the same logic more or less holds true here.

Athletes say weird stuff that they don't necessarily mean all the time. Or that they do mean at the time, but later change their minds. I don't doubt that Harper would ideally like to be the same type of player as Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones and Cal Ripken Jr., and stay with one team for his entire career. But then again, Pablo Sandoval said he wanted to retire a Giant literally just days before he signed with the Red Sox. If the Lerners get cheap or don't field a championship caliber team, will Harper decide that modeling his career after players who were on multiple teams may not be so bad after all? Of course he will.

Wrapping Up

Ultimately, Harper will sign with the team that provides him the best total package of money, winning, and opportunities to leverage his star power. That may sound simplistic, but based on the number of Yankees fans who believe that it's just about money and Nationals fans who hope that Natitude will be enough to keep him, it seems like something that needs to be pointed out.

As a Nats fan, I obviously want Harper to stay in D.C. And ultimately, I think he will. The Lerners may have an annoying petty streak that leads to things like the arbitration debacle and getting into pissing contests with local government, but they're also smart businesspeople. Baseball has finally reached a place in Washington where the team is both popular and profitable. But that can change really quickly. The best way to ensure that the team keeps winning and that the fans keep showing up is to keep Harper in Washington, no matter what it takes.

And if they don't, if they decide that it's simply not worth it to keep a player who may very well be one of the greatest of his generation...well, it's not like D.C. sports fans don't already have plenty of experience with terrible owners destroying their teams.

 We'll cope.

Aloha

In every really bad movie, there's usually one defining moment where it suddenly hits you that you're watching a really bad movie. That moment in Aloha comes in the first minute. Based on the reviews, I knew there was a very good chance that it was going to be a disappointment. I just didn't think the disappointment would come quite so fast.

The fact that it's a bad film is unfortunate on a couple of levels.

First, it's a Cameron Crowe film. When your resume includes Say Anything, Jerry McGuire and Almost Famous, you're allowed the occasional misstep (which he already had with Elizabethtown and, to a lesser degree, Vanilla Sky), but you're not supposed to stumble this badly. The closest analogue to this situation is M. Night Shyamalan, who was doing just fine through The Village, bombed horribly with Lady in the Water, and crossed the Rubicon with The Happening. Aloha isn't Lady in the Water-bad, but like that film came to define Shyamalan, to use a line that was in Aloha's trailer but was cut out of the film, Crowe is going to wear it like Flava Flav wears a clock.

Speaking of the trailer, that's the second thing that felt like a letdown. I really liked the trailer. Was it corny? A bit. But it hit all the right buttons for me. Characters saying inspiring, Crowe-ish dialogue, Bill Murray doing Bill Murray things, and a fantastic song, "First" by Cold War Kids.

As it turns out, the trailer is something of a misrepresentation of the actual product. It's implied that the first scene in it is what sets off Brian's exile to Hawaii. That scene is actually towards the very end of the film. In the full context of the film, the snippets of dialogue don't work nearly as well. Bill Murray's character isn't as warm and cuddly as he appears to be. And so on. I guess trailers don't need to be 100% accurate, but nor should they attempt to portray an entirely different story.

So in general, it's safe to say that Aloha isn't a good film. But there were several specific things that really drove me nuts. Things that were not just bad, but actually insulting to my intelligence as a moviegoer. And bear in mind, just a few weeks ago, I watched a film where Vin Diesel drove a car through a skyscraper. So I don't think I'm being overly-picky here.

I could probably come up with a top ten list, but in the interest of time, I'll stick with the five worst parts of Aloha:

1) It's been 13 years since Brian and Tracy last saw each other. Tracy's and Woody's daughter, Grace, is 12 years old. Anyone who's seen any movie ever immediately realizes what that means, and to the film's credit, when Tracy tells Brian that Grace is his daughter, it's not presented as a big dramatic reveal.

But how stupid does that make Woody? Did he and Tracy start dating literally the moment after she and Brian broke up? Because otherwise, she would've been several weeks pregnant when they began seeing each other. It's later revealed that Woody does indeed know that Grace is Brian's, but it's unclear if he's always known or realized it when he saw the two of them together. Tracy certainly seemed to be under the impression that he's completely oblivious.

2) Other than the demands of the plot, why was Allison assigned to Brian as a liaison in the first place? He seems to know as much, if not more, about Hawaiian culture than she does. And in an amazing coincidence, he's even close friends with the Hawaiian king who he needs to negotiate with. So she never gets around to doing all that much liaising.

One of the critics' biggest knocks on the film is that Emma Stone was cast as someone who's a quarter Hawaiian and a quarter Chinese. This is actually one of the few things about Aloha that didn't bug me, if for no other reason than that Emma Stone is the one consistently bright spot in the whole film. But from a plot perspective, wouldn't it have made more sense to assign Brian an administrator who's 100% Hawaiian instead of a fighter pilot?

But here's what I really don't get: Why is Allison staying in the hotel room right next to Brian's? She lives there. In Hawaii. She works on that base. Doesn't she have her own apartment?

3) Brian's mission is to negotiate with the sovereign Hawaiian people for a public blessing so that Bill Murray's company can build something or other on sacred ground. After some back and forth with the king, where Brian seems offended by the idea that a military contractor might attempt to do something evil like put weapons into outer space, he brokers a deal where he gets the blessing in exchange for the Hawaiians receiving two mountains and free cell phone service. Who owns the mountains Brian gives away? Which private company will be forced to provide free cell phone service, presumably for life? It doesn't matter. Brian just single-handedly makes the deal. You'd think a military liaison would be like, "Whoa, hey, let's slow down," but Allison seems down with the plan, too.

Did they really need to fly in Brian for this? Because it seems like it could have been taken care of with a phone call. That or, once again, you would think there would be someone already in Hawaii who could handle this.

4) It turns out that Brian isn't just a smooth-talking military contractor who can charm Hawaiian kings. He's also a master hacker. Like, the film just springs this on us out of nowhere in the last fifteen minutes.

As Bill Murray's satellite is shooting up into space, they discover that the Chinese have hacked it. Remember when Brian told the Hawaiian king that the satellite his company is launching doesn't have any weapons on it? IT TOTALLY DOES. But no big deal. Brian says he can undo the Chinese hack while the rocket is launching.

Even if the satellite didn't have a giant laser or nukes or whatever on board (I don't think we ever really find out what sort of weapon was involved), this seems like a grossly irresponsible thing to do. There's no reason given why the launch can't be cancelled. But luckily, Brian is able to undo the hack. We know this because a bunch of red text on his monitor turns green and the control room breaks out into relieved applause, as control rooms in movies do.

5) But all that is just set up for the big climax. Just when you thought the movie had run out of old friends for Brian to run into on Hawaii, there's one more. Some slovenly guy with a beard who works alone in an observatory, who's clearly also some sort of hacker. You can tell because he's a slovenly guy with a beard who works alone in an observatory.

Again, Brian hasn't been back to Hawaii in 13 years. Imagine if someone, even someone who was a really, really close friend once, who you hadn't seen in 13 years, asked you for a favor. Would you do it? What if that favor was helping him blow up a billion dollar military satellite, where the penalty would almost certainly be spending the rest of your life in federal prison? It takes Brian roughly ten seconds to talk his buddy into completely throwing his life away, and before you know it, Brian is telling him to--and I wish I was making this up--pump "every sound in recorded history" up to the satellite. I know you can do a lot of shit with computers nowadays, but I'm pretty sure you still can't do that.

But it works. The satellite blows up. From sound. But instead of being dragged off to Guantanamo Bay with his friend, Brian is allowed to leave under his own free will. Alec Baldwin yells at him and Bill Murray makes ominous threats, but you never really get the sense that Brian just committed an act of domestic terrorism, which he totally did.

None of that matters, though! Because the government finds out that Bill Murray actually did have weapons on board that satellite. Everyone seems mostly amused by the whole thing, as if a billionaire industrialist sending weapons into space, presumably to be used for evil, isn't really that big of a deal. At least when James Bond stops someone like that, at the end of the film, everyone at MI6 appears to be greatly relieved.

The scene where Bill Murray gets arrested, alone, on the beach, looking up the sky and I guess contemplating how close he came to ruling the world, before being dragged away by the FBI, sums up the entire Aloha experience: It looks nice, but makes no sense whatsoever.

But here's the thing: In spite of all the stupid shit I just described, and lots more stupid shit that I didn't...I did in fact kind of enjoy Aloha.

I always hate it when film geeks attempt to deflect criticism of a movie they like by claiming that the people who don't share their opinion simply "don't get" what the director was attempting. So I won't do that here. But at the same time, I do have this feeling that Crowe was attempting something. I can't define it, and he clearly failed miserably at it. But there's just enough of it sprinkled throughout the film that I appreciated it on some level.

Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize liking a bad movie. It's been known to happen.