‘Bryce is Philadelphia now’: How a Vegas kid became the face of Philly sports
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Jesse Rogers, ESPN Staff Writer
BRYCE HARPER’S DAILY routine is no different than many Philadelphia sports fans. On his drive into the city from his home in the suburb of Haddonfield, New Jersey, he listens to local sports talk radio. Often, he walks into Citizens Bank Park wearing gear of a Philadelphia sports team. Then Harper changes into his uniform, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work.
Harper gets a thrill from hearing the passion that fans in his sports-crazed city have for their teams — especially because it’s a passion he shares with them.
“People that call into the radio, they love it. They love us. I love listening to it. I think it’s hilarious. I enjoy listening about all the other sports in town. I love cheering on the Eagles. I love cheering on the Sixers and Flyers,” Harper said.”
“We all know what it’s like to play here and so we all cheer for each other and understand each other. When the city rallies around a team and all the players, it’s just so much fun to see.”
Harper began endearing himself to a fan base known for its rough edges from the moment he signed a 13-year, $330 million contract before the 2019 season. He famously overruled agent Scott Boras’ insistence to include an opt-out, wanting to show loyalty to the place he planned to spend the rest of his career. He also turned down an opportunity to don No. 34 — his number with the Washington Nationals — declaring that Hall of Fame pitcher Roy Halladay “should be the last to wear it.” When he bemoaned the price of beer at Citizens Bank Park, Philadelphia knew it had found one of its own.
“Bryce is really good at saying the right thing and I don’t think it’s B.S.,” longtime Phillies first baseman and current broadcaster John Kruk told ESPN recently. “He means it. From Day 1, when he signed that contract and he didn’t ask for that opt-out, that meant a lot to the fans.”
Fast forward five years and Harper is even more beloved in Philly. Sure, winning an MVP award in 2021 helped that cause. So did leading the Phillies to the World Series the following year and returning to the National League Championship Series in October. But it’s not just the awards and playoff victories that have strengthened his bond with the city.
“I came from Southern California, having no idea what the East Coast was like, let alone Philadelphia,” Chase Utley, another Philly great, said in a phone conversation. “It takes a certain type of personality to succeed and thrive in the Philadelphia sports world. Bryce had it right away.
“He brings you into his game with his talent and grit. That resonates with the fan base.”
The adoration of an East Coast city that prides itself on blue-collar toughness might not be what you’d expect for a superstar who grew up 2,500 miles away, among the glittering lights of Las Vegas. But Harper has always been as much South Philly as Vegas Strip.
“I kind of always thought the city suited him and it was only a matter of time before he got here,” said Trea Turner, who was also Harper’s teammate in D.C. “Bryce is Philadelphia now.”
HARPER WANTS YOU to know at least one thing about Las Vegas: It’s not all about the Strip. There are neighborhoods and locals and working class people all over — just not necessarily where tourists go. It’s more blue-collar than many think.
“You have to be a hard-working town when you’re building all those casinos,” he said.
Harper’s father, Ron, is an iron worker who did local construction for 30 years; his extended family all worked “blue-collar jobs” as well. Harper’s work ethic was honed early in life, in part by laying rebar with his dad.
He took that mindset onto the field with him, quickly outpacing ballplayers his age and playing against players four or five years older on Las Vegas’ best travel teams. At 16, he decided to leave high school, earn his GED and enroll at the College of Southern Nevada. He continued to dominate there, winning college baseball’s Golden Spikes Award, an honor that’s been given to a junior college player just twice in nearly a half-century, in 2010.
All the early morning runs, the workouts in the gym and his dominance on the field paid off that same year when Harper was selected first overall by Washington.
“Bryce was the guy. Everybody had their eyes on Bryce,” said Mike Bryant, who coached Harper, Joey Gallo and his own future major league MVP son Kris, in Las Vegas youth leagues. “Just having Bryce around brought eyes on everyone else. He was the guy. No question about it.”
That sort of attitude and expectations also helped prepare him for the kind of scrutiny a superstar faces in Philadelphia.
“He’s been in the spotlight since he was 14,” former Phillies manager Larry Bowa said. “That has a lot to do with it. He’s had pressure on him his whole life. When you come here, you better be able to deal with it. That doesn’t bother him.”
NEVER WAS HARPER’S work ethic more apparent than his months of rehab after his November 2022 Tommy John surgery. The initial timetable had him rejoining the team around the 2023 All-Star break, but he had a different plan. On May 2 — more than two months ahead of schedule — Harper was back, moving to a new position and eventually helping the Phillies to another playoff berth.
“I was calling him a superhero,” Phillies infielder Bryson Stott said. “His body heals faster than anyone I think I’ve ever seen.”
Though Harper’s move to first base was initially to protect his still-tender arm, the initial success led the Phillies to make the move permanent this offseason. Harper had enough clout that he could have vetoed the plan and stayed at designated hitter or lobbied for a move back to the outfield.
“That’s the first thing our infield coach, Bobby Dickerson, said to me: ‘If you’re all-in, we’re going to do this. If you’re not, we’re not going to,'” Harper recalled. “From that point on, I told him, ‘Whatever you want to do.’
“I love being coached.”
The undertaking meant Harper would need to spend hours this spring learning the nuances of a new position, often putting in extra time before batting practice taking ground balls. His teammates and coaches saw the former MVP attack his new challenge like a rookie trying to make the roster.
“We spent at least 20 minutes a day on our half field. We did all the skill parts of playing the position,” Dickerson said. “Then I did a little verbal test with him every few days, like, ‘Runner on first, double down the right-field line. Where do you go?’ I would hit him with that a good bit.”
“It’s been an amazing transformation to watch, actually. You spend your whole career doing different things in the outfield, then in the major leagues [you] learn to play first base.”
The results so far tell the story. According to ESPN Stats & Information, his range moving to his right has improved since last year and he ranks near the top of the league in outs above average (second) and defensive runs saved (second). Through Wednesday, Harper’s had 251 chances at first base without an error.
“It’s still a transition,” Harper said. “I’m still learning where I need to be on the field. When a guy hits a ball down the line or in the gap, you can’t get caught watching paint dry. I sit there sometimes and watch Bryson make a great play and I’m like, ‘Holy crap, I have to cover first base.'”
Stott, who is also from Las Vegas, sees the connection between that work Harper puts in behind the scenes and his roots. Yes, there are bright lights and big paydays but nothing gets done without effort.
“You see the casino executives,” Stott said. “They’re working, but they’re not in the streets building the casinos. You don’t see those people. You don’t see the work [Bryce] put in either.”
NO MATTER HOW hard you work — or how well you perform — there is a reality for all professional athletes in Philadelphia: You will be booed.
Harper was already hearing it from the fans on his first Opening Day as a Phillie, in 2019 — and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“On my first day I punched out against Julio Teheran, and I’m walking back to the dugout and they booed me on my first at-bat,” Harper said. “I totally understand and get it.
“When you do stuff wrong they’re going to let you know. As players in this clubhouse, we love that and from an individual standpoint, I love it.”
Harper made it clear that a few boos weren’t going to keep him down — he homered in each of the next three games. Just as important, he answered the tough postgame questions from reporters, starting with that initial 0-for-3 debut.
That culture of accountability has spread through a clubhouse filled with players who have come to join Harper in Philadelphia, a city that is now a destination for big-name free agents. First it was Zack Wheeler signing a $118 million deal before the 2020 season, then sluggers Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos signed on the next season. Finally, Turner reunited with Harper by signing a $300 million contract an offseason ago.
Together, they have formed a core beloved in the city as few Philadelphia teams — in any sport — have been before.
“When they have a s— game, [the fans] want to hear it,” Bowa said. “‘Hey, I stunk tonight.’ Schwarber does it. Turner, too. Bryce has had that kind of impact.”
Some around the Phillies credit the bond Harper created for bringing out a softer side of the fan base. Instead of booing Alec Bohm out of town when he was caught mouthing “I f—ing hate this place” after making an error, the fans rallied around their young third baseman. Turner received a similar reaction when he was greeted with a standing ovation — not a round of boos — when he came to the plate in August, in the midst of a prolonged slump in his first season with the Phillies.
“He’s done a good job of showing the other side of Philly,” Turner said. “The coolest part, over the last five years, is to see where it started and where it is now. The whole organization and the fans and all that stuff is in a lot better position.”
Schwarber agreed. “He embraces the way that they think,” he said. “And he’s really public with it. He wants to win it and win it for the city. That’s what you want out of a leader. That’s what makes it exciting to come and play every day.”
Of course, Harper knows Philadelphia is still Philadelphia, and the boos could always come unless one of these seasons ends with him holding up the World Series trophy. Though they’ve come close, a championship has evaded them, and the euphoria of the team’s unexpected 2022 postseason run was replaced by frustration when the team lost Game 7 of the National League Championship Series at home in October. Signed through 2031, Harper still has nearly a decade to deliver that ultimate prize to his city.
“You do it for so long that it becomes the goal even more, right?” Harper said. “We have such a great group of guys. All we want to do is win. We don’t care about anything else.
“Philly is a very results-oriented town.”
Sports
Takeaways from the Panthers’ journey to the Eastern Conference finals, early look at matchup with Rangers
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Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporter
The Florida Panthers waited out the Boston Bruins in their second round Stanley Cup playoff series.
And patience paid off.
The Panthers and Bruins were knotted 1-1 in Game 6 on Friday until defenseman Gustav Forsling broke the stalemate for Florida with just over ninety seconds left in regulation. Boston goalie Jeremy Swayman let out the juiciest of rebounds he’d love to have to back and Forsling made no mistake punching the Panthers ticket to an Eastern Conference final against New York.
Now that should be a high scoring affair.
How the Panthers got there — and what to expect from their series with the Rangers — is here.
Savvy Sergei
Most goaltenders will admit it’s better to stay busy. And in this series against Boston, Sergei Bobrovsky decidedly was not. Boston averaged the fewest shots on goal among remaining playoff teams (25 per game), and there were lengthy stretches where Bobrovsky didn’t have much to do.
It would be easy to dismiss his contributions to Florida’s success by just looking at the numbers then (.896 save percentage, 2.51 goals-against average) but that doesn’t tell the whole Bobrovsky tale.
The Panthers got the timely saves from their veteran. He wasn’t leaky at the wrong time, despite being underworked. Plus, if you take out the Panthers’ 5-1 loss in Game 1, Bobrovsky didn’t allow more than two goals in an outing the rest of the way.
Being dialed in at crucial moments is how goaltenders set themselves apart in the playoffs, and that’s what Bobrovsky did for Florida throughout the second-round run.
0:26
Bobrovsky makes back-to-back saves in heroic fashion
Bobrovsky makes back-to-back saves in heroic fashion
Sergei Bobrovsky makes two consecutive saves in the final minutes of the second period.
Bolstered by balance
The Panthers tapped in with 12 different goal scorers against the Bruins, with all but three of their forwards landing on the scoresheet with at least one. There was no singular scoring star (although Aleksander Barkov came closest to that moniker, by pacing the group with three) and so Boston had its hands full trying to keep all four lines from running through them.
Florida didn’t need it’s top skaters to do all the heavy lifting, and that’s a critical component at playoff time. Bruins netminder Jeremy Swayman was terrific again in this series against a Panthers’ group firing the second-most shots on net among remaining playoff teams (36.5 per game), and that’s a difficult ask for any goalie to stand up to when they’re not offering the sort of goal support Florida does. That’s a major reason why the Panthers are moving on — and Boston’s headed home for the season.
No sleeping on special teams
It’s the great equalizer, right? Generally, the team who wins that special teams battle comes out on top in a series.
Florida was the unequivocal victor there against Boston.
The Panthers ripped in six power-play goals — and one shorthanded score — while the Bruins managed a single goal on the man advantage. The difference that makes in undeniable in the final outcome for both sides. Florida won by larger margins in this series — including two games by four goals or more — than they did against the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round — where only two wins were by two goals or more — but the Lightning matched them on special teams.
When the Bruins fell down in that area, the Panthers pounced all the way to a series win.
Postseason poise
There’s something to be said for owning the moment. Florida did just that.
The blowout in Game 1 could have rattled the Panthers and set an ominous tone for the series ahead. Instead, it seemed to settle them down. There’s confidence that comes from overcoming early obstacles, and any challenges the Panthers faced from there were met with composure.
Florida wasn’t ruined without Sam Bennett in Game 1 and 2, while the Bruins fared worse without Brad Marchand in Game 4 and 5. The Panthers could stay on course when Boston was up 1-0 after the first period in Game 4 and eventually chipped their way back to victory. Yes, there was a controversial goalie interference sequence that factored into Florida’s win, but the call was out of their control.
The Panthers focused on what they could do to succeed, and it paid off with a consecutive Eastern Conference finals bid.
How the Panthers match up with the New York Rangers
A conference finals matchup between the Rangers and Panthers could break records for playoff goal scoring.
No, seriously.
Florida and New York are the third and fourth top offenses in the entire playoff field, averaging 3.70 and 3.50 goals per game respectively. Their power plays are excellent (31.4% for New York and 23.7% for Florida) and the Panthers are second in shots on net (34.0 per game) which would only add to the potential firepower these two teams could generate on one sheet.
Matthew Tkachuk (four goals and 13 points in the postseason), Barkov (five goals and 13 points), and Carter Verhaeghe (six goals and 10 points) would give the Rangers’ elite a run for their money trading chances though, especially if the rush game opens up.
New York’s defense would have to improve over its second-round performance to keep them from running wild. However, the back-and-forth that could come out of this series would highlight what made both Florida and New York so entertaining in their second-round series respectively (although the Rangers stumbled a bit towards the end attempting to close Carolina out).
Another interesting aspect of a Rangers-Panthers series is, of course, in the crease. Sergei Bobrovksy’s numbers (.896 SV%, 2.51 GAA) aren’t exactly on par with Igor Shesterkin‘s (.923 SV%, 2.40). But Bobrovsky wasn’t tested often by Boston and that, as mentioned above, can affect how a goalie performs.
Regardless, Bobrovsky was terrific when he had to be. Shesterkin has been that and more for the Rangers throughout the playoffs. New York’s bread and butter though has been its attack up front plus excellent netminding, and a series against Florida would give them the opportunity to lean on both.
Sports
‘This fan base is going to fall in love with him’: How Luis Arráez is following in Tony Gwynn’s footsteps
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
Comparisons to Tony Gwynn began to follow Luis Arráez when he first established himself in the big leagues, growing more prevalent as the hits piled up and the batting titles followed. Arráez wasn’t as prolific, but his skills and the way he utilized them — consistently spraying baseballs to unoccupied spaces all over the field, barreling pitches regardless of how or where they were thrown — made links to one of history’s most gifted hitters seem inevitable.
Tony Gwynn Jr., the late Hall of Famer’s son, often heard them and largely understood them. But it wasn’t until the night of May 4, while watching Arráez compile four hits in his debut with the same San Diego Padres team his father starred for, that he actually felt them.
“I honestly had goosebumps watching him put together at-bats,” said Gwynn Jr., a retired major league outfielder who serves as an analyst for the Padres’ radio broadcasts. “It took me back to watching film with my dad as he was basically doing the same thing.”
Gwynn was universally celebrated throughout the 1980s and ’90s, but Arráez stands as a polarizing figure in the slug-obsessed, launch-angle-consumed era in which he plays. Some, like the Miami Marlins team that traded him away earlier this month, see a one-dimensional player who doesn’t provide enough speed, power or defensive acumen to build around. Others, like the Padres, who used four prospects to acquire him at a time when trades rarely happen, see the type of offensive mastery that more than makes up for it.
What’s inarguable is that Arráez is the ultimate outlier.
Case in point: The publicly available bat-speed metrics recently unveiled by Statcast feature a graph that places hitters based on their relationship between average bat speed (X-axis) and squared-up rate (Y-axis). All alone on the top left corner, far removed from the other 217 qualified hitters, is Arráez. He has the slowest swing in the sport but also its most efficient, theoretically, because he meets pitches with the sweet spot of his bat more often than anybody else.
Arráez has only 24 home runs in 2,165 career at-bats. But his .324 batting average since his 2019 debut leads the majors, 10 points higher than that of Freddie Freeman, the runner-up. He walks at a below-average clip, but his major league-leading 7.5% strikeout rate is about a third of the MLB average during that stretch, cartoonish in the most strikeout-prone era in baseball history.
He is elite even when he chases: The major league average on pitches outside the rulebook strike zone since the start of the 2023 season is .162. Arráez’s: .297.
“Now with the analytics they focus on home runs, they focus on guys hitting the ball hard but hitting .200,” Arráez said in Spanish. “But in my mind, and with all the work that I do, I stay focused on just doing my job — not try to do too much or try to do what they’re telling me to do. Analysts say my exit velocity is [among] the lowest in the big leagues. Amen. Let them keep saying that. As long as I have my health, I keep doing things to help my team, I’m going to be fine.”
Arráez became the first player to win a batting title in the American and National leagues in consecutive seasons last year. But trade rumors surrounded him from the onset of 2024, his second-to-last season before free agency. As a 27-year-old two-time All-Star with a .324 career batting average, a sterling reputation and a stated desire to remain in South Florida, he was a player the directionless Marlins franchise could build around. But a new front office considered him expendable. A 9-24 start to the season created an opening. And on May 3, five minutes before the first pitch was thrown in Oakland, Marlins manager Skip Schumaker called Arráez into his office.
“I’m not going to lie to you,” Arráez said, “I wasn’t ready to be traded.”
Schumaker told Arráez he’d have to remove him from the lineup because a deal with the Padres was close. He gave him the option of returning to the clubhouse or going into the dugout for one final moment with his teammates. Arráez stayed until the fifth inning, retreated to his hotel room, waited on a call from Padres officials and hopped on a flight at noon the following day to meet his new team.
Arráez didn’t have enough clothes for the additional six days of the Padres’ road trip. He wore his Marlins-colored cleats through stops in Phoenix and Chicago and compiled eight hits in 20 at-bats during that stretch. After the team got back to San Diego, he used the May 9 off day to search for an apartment and spend time with his mom, wife and three daughters, who flew in for a weekend visit, then delivered a walk-off single against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers in his home debut the following night. He’s still living out of a hotel room crammed with unopened boxes, but he already feels wanted. Embraced, even.
“They’ve welcomed me here with open arms,” Arráez said. “I feel as if I’ve been here since spring training.”
Arráez was a 4-year-old in Venezuela when Gwynn played the final season of his 20-year career in 2001. When Gwynn died in 2014, Arráez was still a teenager on the Minnesota Twins‘ Dominican Summer League team. Hearing comparisons to Gwynn made him curious enough to find old clips of a player who was mostly foreign to him. He began to study his approach to hitting, marveling specifically at Gwynn’s ability to let pitches travel deep into the strike zone before driving them to the opposite field.
Conversations with one of Gwynn’s most important mentors, Twins icon and gifted batsman Rod Carew, brought Arráez more insight. Now similar conversations are taking place with Gwynn’s only son. When the Padres return from their seven-game road trip through Atlanta and Cincinnati, Arráez plans to visit the Gwynn statue that sits just outside of Petco Park. He isn’t necessarily leaning into the comparisons, but he isn’t running from them, either.
“It’s such a great experience when fans embrace you with open arms and tell you that I’m a mini Tony Gwynn, and that I have a lot of traits that remind them of him,” Arráez said. “It’s nice to hear people say things like that.”
Perhaps the quality Gwynn and Arráez share most is self-awareness. “Know thyself” is a line Gwynn Jr. heard his father say repeatedly growing up, one that translated directly to how he approached his profession: He knew his strengths, worked relentlessly to maximize them and never tried to emulate others. Arráez’s new teammates already see the same in him.
“It’s not like he goes up there and just does it,” Padres third baseman Manny Machado said. “He puts a lot of work in the cage, before games, even before BP and stuff like that. He knows his strength, and he works on it.”
Baseball’s evolution has made it harder than ever for someone like Arráez to exist. Pitchers have never thrown harder, data has never been more prevalent, batting averages have hardly ever been lower. But Padres manager Mike Shildt is adamant that Arráez shouldn’t be an anomaly.
He recalled an old San Diego Union-Tribune article that re-ran May 9, on what would have been Gwynn’s 64th birthday. It detailed the amount of time Gwynn spent working on hitting, and it validated something Shildt had long believed: That more players could hit .300, even today, if they worked on the craft of doing so as diligently and as pointedly as Gwynn did. As Arráez does.
“When you have an ability to hit a ball to all the different areas, you’re going to hit,” Shildt said. “And big picture, our industry hasn’t taught that anymore. It’s not valued anymore. It’s not monetized anymore. You can’t quantify this, but it’s a shame how many amateur and lower-level professional players have been excluded from continuing to play because they don’t meet a measurable. They don’t meet an exit velocity or bat speed or launch angle, or all of those things that this game is now basically recruiting and monetizing blindly. They’re just getting hits. And somehow that became out of vogue in our industry in general.”
But those are now someone else’s problems. The Padres will gladly take Arráez, all he his and all he isn’t, and slot him ahead of Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts in hopes of riding his singular bat to the playoffs.
Arráez is still six batting titles away from catching Gwynn. He isn’t anywhere near as good a defender or as lethal a baserunner as Gwynn was early in his career, and he needs another decade-plus of similar production — heightened production, actually, given the .345 batting average Gwynn boasted between his ages 27 and 37 seasons — to even approach him as a hitter. But Arráez’s style is the closest we’ve got.
And if there’s one place that can appreciate it, it’s his new one.
“This fan base is going to fall in love with him,” Gwynn Jr. said. “It’s how a lot of them grew up watching baseball.”
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