In the current my-truth era, everyone is not just permitted but encouraged to pretend they're right whether or not they actually are. The deranged and deranging downsides of this are obvious and everywhere, but one of the smaller of those is that heroes are by now pretty much an eye-of-the-beholder thing. For instance, Defector's Philadelphia Bureau is pretty in on Bryce Harper because, well, because he's Bryce Harper. Even now, in a comparatively meh season—various injuries have led him to put up some fine if not quite Harperian numbers—he's pretty much whatever you make of him, as athletic golden boys in their 32-year tend to be.
Unless, of course, he does something like offer to throw the commissioner of baseball out of the Phillies clubhouse skidding down the hallway face first, in which case Harper becomes not a hero or even a golden boy, but a full-on god. And we say that while being fully cognizant that the baseline for godhood does not usually involve bumrushing a 66-year-old lawyer out of a room as though he were just another loud and obnoxious drunk at a corner bar. Bryce Harper is a god, period, full stop, and we are not accepting countervailing views. You want to argue? Go get in a fight with your neighbor. He's been tardy on the rosebush trimming all summer.
Harper was with his teammates last Monday, enduring Rob Manfred's annual visit—the commissioner now goes to every team every year to let them know what a swell guy he really is, even though he is mostly the owners' valet—when Manfred gently broached the idea of a salary cap without actually saying the words. As first reported by The Bandwagon's Hannah Keyser and then advanced by ESPN's Jeff Passan, this led Harper, who has been through 14 of these and knows how all the dogs and ponies dance, to rise to his feet and interject a calm and reasoned rebuttal: "If you want to speak about that, you can get the fuck out of our clubhouse." Manfred for his part said he would in fact decline Harper's offer to get the fuck out of there, at which point his Phillies teammate Nick Castellanos asked a question to cool both their foreheads.
"It was pretty intense, definitely passionate," Castellanos told ESPN later. "Both of 'em. The commissioner giving it back to Bryce and Bryce giving it back to the commissioner. That's Harp. He's been doing this since he was 15 years old. It's just another day. I wasn't surprised."
Manfred has been going from team to team leaning into the subject, working around the MLB Players Association (and frequently accompanied by retired ballplayers who now serve as league ambassadors) on the theory that the union leadership has heard all these arguments before and knows how to fight that fight. Manfred has had several owners push the narrative as well, most laughably Hal Steinbrenner (Yankees) and new private equity lord in town David Rubenstein (Orioles), that a cap is the only way to even the disparity between the spends and the spend-nots, though it is far more likely that it is about raising franchise values for the dwindling number of eager billionaires who want to buy baseball rather than soccer teams, WNBA teams, or other nouveau investments.
That Manfred is doing this now, two years before the CBA expires and four years before his announced retirement (or to use Harper's terminology, GTFO) date, suggests an urgency that most negotiations do not tend to have, as Castellanos noted:
"Rob seems to be in a pretty desperate place on how important it is to get this salary cap, because he's floating the word lockout two years in advance of our collective bargaining agreement. That's nothing to throw around. That's the same thing as me saying in a marriage, 'I think divorce is a possibility. It's probably going to happen.' You don't just say those things."
No, but you might hint at them clumsily, which is why Harper felt the need to put some urgency into the negotiations by making the union's first unofficial counterproposal—face to face, without flowery or indirect language, and while holding a bat as a prop. At least so far it's just a prop—you cannot really make a convincing case for suggesting that someone representing the powerful should fuck off if you're emptyhanded.
Harper has now personalized all the other points of contention, following the essential truth of all negotiations: It is easy to maintain unity and forbearance when a single issue is stated clearly and forcefully. Even players who might not be up on the ins and outs of capology understand telling the boss (or the boss' valet) to GTFO without much extraneous clarification. When compared to the NFLPA, which just watched its own leadership GTFO in shame instead of getting a chance to demand it of them, Harper offered a satisfying, clarifying, even cleansing breath for the battle ahead.
And to be fair, we must commend Manfred for not backing down, although he fell short of what we really wanted, which was for him and Harper to meet forehead vein to forehead vein screaming, "No, YOU get the fuck out!" at the top of their lungs. Short of televising the negotiations themselves, this would be as close as we are likely to get to 2027, when the owners padlock their ballparks and both sides prepare for a long and wonderfully profane festival of united and righteously mutual fucking off. Now that's a national pastime whose time has come.
