Mormon Baseball

Posts Tagged ‘Bryce Harper’

The last remaining Mormon in the MLB postseason, Bryce Harper, finally started batting like the Harper that fans knew and expected. He started last night’s game against the St. Louis Cardinals with a triple off of pitcher Adam Wainwright, driving in his first post-season RBI and setting himself up to score when Ryan Zimmerman hit a home run two pitches later. Then in the third, Harper hit a 92 mile per hour sinker into the stands for his first post season home run and only the second postseason home run by a teenager in major league baseball history.

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Bryce Harper is still mired in a slump that has left him with just one post-season hit in 18 at bats. But while he has had to content himself with his performance in the field, his team, the Washington Nationals, have managed to keep alive, winning yesterday to force a 5th and deciding game with the St. Louis Cardinals. I’m sure that both Harper and his team are thinking this would be a great time for his bat to wake up!

Meanwhile, the other Mormon playing in the MLB postseason, Oakland As backup 2nd baseman Adam Rosales, has been eliminated along with his team. Rosales never got a chance to play in what would have been his first MLB postseason appearance. Perhaps he will get another shot in the future.

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Can we still say “no joy in mudville” if Casey doesn’t get a hit, but also doesn’t strike out? In yesterday’s game against the Cardinals, Bryce Harper didn’t strike out, but he also didn’t get a hit in 5 trips to the plate. His postseason average is down to .067! Perhaps post season pitching is just that much better? too much for a 19-year-old rookie?

At least Harper is getting a chance. The Oakland As backup 2nd baseman, Adam Rosales, still hasn’t reached the plate. For Rosales and the As everything is on the line in tonight’s game against the Tigers; the two teams are tied in their series at 2 games apiece.

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With the elimination of the Tampa Bay Rays (and a couple of other AL teams) yesterday, the teams that will make the post season are now set (although who will lead the AL East and AL West vs. who will be the AL wild card teams isn’t yet certain). As a result we now know which Mormon players will make the post season this year: Bryce Harper of the Washington Nationals and Adam Rosales of the Oakland As.

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I don’t normally begin my write-up talking about a minor league player, but this week the stellar pitching of Taylor Cole with the Vancouver Canadians (A short season) kind of demanded front billing. Cole came close to baseball’s ultimate performance, a pitching performance over 7 2/3rds innings marred only by a teammate’s error. Still, Cole was pitching a no-hitter for his 6th win of the season when he was pulled from the game against the Yakima Bears. The Northwest league’s regular season has ended, Cole finishes the year with a stunning (and league-leading) 0.81 era. He will likely pitch in the Canadians’ post-season games, which start today.

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The Mormon domain—that part of the Western U.S. where Mormons are a significant portion of the population—first gained a major league team in 1998 when the expansion Arizona Diamondbacks started playing. Since then several Mormons have played on the team, but recently there hasn’t been a Mormon for local fans to cheer. That changed again Sunday when the Diamondbacks traded for Matt Lindstrom.
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A reader has alerted me to another Mormon playing professional baseball, Lance Pendleton, who is currently with the Durham Bulls in the Tampa Bay Ray’s organization. After he was drafted by the Yankees out of Rice University, Pendleton has spent 6 years in the minors, rising to even the major leagues, debuting on April 15th of last year. Unfortunately, his numbers aren’t very strong this year — a 4.49 era so far — so a return to the majors seems unlikely at the moment.

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While injuries prevented the Mormons on last year’s All Star teams, Roy Halladay and Jacoby Ellsbury, from making this year’s team, almost as if it were destiny a last-minute injury led to the selection last Friday of National League rookie Bryce Harper as an All Star. Since Mormons don’t believe in predestination, but in ‘fore-ordination,’ which requires effort and merit and allows for agency, Harper must deserve the spot, right?

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The Last Natural by Rob Miech

A review of The Last Natural: Bryce Harper’s Big Gamble in Sin City and the Greatest Amateur Season Ever by Rob Miech. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, 2012. 356 p. Review copy courtesy of the publisher.

The title ‘The Last Natural‘ packs a lot of meaning and connotation into a few words. While ‘natural’ clearly refers to the inherent talent that Bryce Harper seems to have, there are a few other connotations, at least in baseball. Since Harper arrives at what might be considered the end of the “steroid era,” it could be a kind of pessimistic reference to Harper’s eschewing drugs since ‘natural’ can also mean pure or unchanged. It could also be a nod to Bernard Malamud‘s novel The Natural, perhaps the finest work of fiction about baseball and the source for the Robert Redford film of the same name.

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Matthew Neil

Last week Major League Baseball held its most important annual draft, indicating interest in more than 1,500 possible players. As far as I can tell, just two of them are Mormon, down from 6 last year.

I’ve diligently searched the list of those drafted for other Mormon players, but I wasn’t able to identify anyone as Mormon, based on articles and web pages that turned up in my searches. Of course, there are likely some who are Mormon, but I couldn’t find any indication of that.

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