1 THE LAST PRESEASON PRACTICE of Bryce Harper's amateur life started on Thursday, January 28, 2010, with a meeting of all the College of Southern Nevada coaches and players in center field at Morse Stadium. The verdant diamond sat in the southeast nook of the vast Las Vegas valley, which was more of a bowl. Envision a large, square table, roughly tilted from Summerlin in the northwest to Morse Stadium, in Henderson, at the southeast. Rainwater generally flowed toward Henderson, toward Morse. That is also where the eyes of the baseball world gushed in 2010. The square, white steeple and narrow spire atop a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a wide, dull-brown-brick edifice off to the right beyond a swath of desert brush, marked the long I-515 off-ramp Harper descended every morning to College Drive. After he turned left on College and zipped through the freeway underpass, to Harper's left a football field, soccer pitch, and baseball diamond were nudged between the freeway and Foothill High. Basketball and tennis courts were wedged between the street and the far left of three buildings, wide and white, with a red-tiled, low-arching roof.
The middle one was low and white, too, with a flat, red-tiled roof. The main building on the right looked like a prison, with a tall wall of red-sandstone blocks topped by a thin layer of gray-sandstone bricks. Between the street and the two right-side structures was the school's sprawling parking lot. Black Mountain loomed behind the campus to the west. As Harper turned left onto Heather Drive, just past the high school, to the right stood the main CSN building, its tall, beige corner square topped by a light blue ribbon. That corner was cut off to form a flat, inviting entrance, with a seven-pointed window tilted at the top that bathed those inside with the morning sun. Heading west on Heather, newcomers could easily miss the short, S-curved, downhill asphalt drive, whose three well-camouflaged speed bumps destroyed innocent shock absorbers. At the bottom, on the other side of the fifteen-foot-tall ashen-sandstone clubhouse with the tilted metal roof to the left and the three batting cages to the right, Morse Stadium and the Lied Baseball Complex-the new home for the local baseball hero whose fame had been increasing by the day-awaited.
Out in center field, Coach Tim Chambers told the Coyotes to be prepared for the four games they would play over the next three days. Chambers confidant Jim Schwanke, a former assistant coach at Oklahoma State and Louisiana State, talked about the importance of bonding and selflessness. But Chambers held court. He shooed the seventeen-year-old Harper away in his white pants and gray practice jersey. CSN catchers coach Cooper Fouts stuck by Harper's left as they strolled toward the right-field foul line. This is about you being successful, Fouts said as he looked up at Harper, and us being successful. Chambers shifted his tack to the supporting cast when Harper had slipped out of earshot. "You all know that guy's the shit.
None of you know what he's going through, what he's thinking, or what he's feeling. He's why we have that new scoreboard. Why we have those new seats. Why we have that new parking lot. Protect him. Watch out for him. If we have no jealousies, we'll be fine." Thirty professional baseball scouts, taking notes and enjoying the sun and wasting their employers' money, peered out at the practice.
Some sat on shiny blue plastic seats on the red-boulder bleachers behind home plate. Some stood behind the protective black netting, surrounding the plate area, in clumps of two or three. The black cord of his stopwatch, in his right pocket, that wrapped around his right wrist gave away a scout from twenty paces. Logos of the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Mets, Arizona Diamondbacks, and Washington Nationals, especially the Nationals, advertised on Windbreakers, sweaters, and visors. In the ten previous CSN seasons, maybe a dozen scouts had watched the Coyotes at any particular practice. Twenty-four hours after this practice, Morse would burst at its seams with a record crowd of nearly two thousand. In three weekends, CSN would surpass its gate revenue from the entire 2009 season.
They all were eager to see what the Rook, what Chambers called his burgeoning star, would do with a wooden bat in junior college. The scouts swarmed that Thursday practice to see Harper, who had graced the June 8, 2009, cover of Sports Illustrated wearing his red Las Vegas High jersey and gaudy wrestlerlike eye black, at the tail end of his powerful left-handed swing, squinting as if he were watching the Rawlings he had just poked turn into a pea and plop into the Pacific Ocean, with the setting sun glowing orange against the base of Frenchman Mountain behind him. "Looks a little lean," a scout said to Fouts. "He's at 208 pounds," said Fouts, glancing at the six-foot-three Harper. "Don't worry. He's eatin' Mama's cookin'." Harper towered over Chambers, Fouts, and just about everyone else in the stadium that afternoon. Indeed, when infielder Casey Sato first saw Harper enter the CSN clubhouse, he thought the slugger looked more like a twenty-two-year-old man-a pro seasoned by a rapid rise in the minor leagues who carried himself like John Wayne, just as his old man had taught him-than a kid who was halfway through high school.
Harper's hair was jet-black, thanks to dye, and closely cropped and blocked off in back. He wore his sideburns like Montgomery Clift and the bottoms of his jeans turned up, like Marlon Brando. All he needed was a woolen uniform to complete his throwback appearance. His matinee-idol good looks, those almost phosphorescent green eyes and strong chin, and the tiny birthmark just below the outside of his left eye, just might convince Gentlemen's Quarterly scouts to slap Harper on their own cover. The Sports Illustrated cover cemented Harper, targeted for baseball stardom at an early age, as a public figure. It brought him an added measure of celebrity in major league clubhouses, too. Soon after that edition had hit the newsstands and mailboxes, Harper attended a game at Dodger Stadium. His name served as carte blanche at clubhouse doors.
He sat in stadium front rows or luxury suites. Harper knew Orlando Hudson well. As they chatted in the Dodgers' clubhouse before the game, Hudson, in the only season he played second base in Los Angeles, told Harper to go sit on the bench in front of first baseman James Loney's cubicle. Loney, who had Harper's Sports Illustrated cover taped on the inside of his locker, screeched to a stop, eyes wide and mouth agape. The cover boy was sitting right there in front of him. "What the hell you doin' sittin' there?" Loney said. "That's the Kid!" responded Hudson, laughing and nearly falling onto the Dodger-blue carpet. Loney found a black Sharpie and had Harper sign the magazine cover.
"I love LA," Harper said, "and I love those guys." The Sports Illustrated fame had convinced Aaron Marcus, an investment banker who lives on Long Island, New York, to pay $12,500 for a one-of-a-kind Bowman 2010 SuperFractor Bryce Harper baseball card. After seeing the magazine cover and reading about Harper, Marcus became enthralled with the prodigy and began buying his cards. Marcus was awed by Harper's physical ability, work ethic, and potential. After splurging for that card, Marcus said, "For all we know, in a few years he could be hitting six-hundred-foot home runs regularly." Harper's celebrity was circumnavigating the globe. When Las Vegas businessman Jan Landy, who visited Rio de Janeiro so frequently he bought an apartment in the South American playground, was introduced to someone on Ipanema Beach in January 2010 and the Brazilian learned where Landy called home, he asked Landy, Entao voce conhece Bryce Harper? (So you know Bryce Harper?) Landy, who spoke fluent Portuguese but had never met Harper, was astounded by the young star's far-reaching popularity. Harper had created his own end around to the draft.
He'd pummeled the preppies with an aluminum bat. Now he'd jumped to a new level of competition, and attention, in the Scenic West Athletic Conference. The only other collegiate leagues in America whose hitters employed wooden bats were the Empire Conference, Arizona Community College Athletic Association, and the Division II Mon-Dak Conference, all in junior college. Typically viewed as a last-chance refuge for athletes who couldn't make the grade on the field or in the classroom at four-year institutions, junior college baseball took on a whole new diamond-studded dimension in 2010. Professional-talent evaluators and college recruiters would flock to Morse Stadium. Harper would swing his black Marucci CU26 maple Pro Models, even a few pink ones, with vigor … when umpires weren't examining his every move with a magnifying glass, or Harper wasn't imploding over striking out, popping up to an infielder, dueling with his coach, or melting down from his own expectations. At that last preseason practice session, as the Coyotes stretched along the right-field foul line, they made fun of Cooper Fouts, who had settled on a day and venue with his bride-to-be for their midsummer wedding. Already lost one nut by getting engaged, they roared at Fouts as they lay on their backs with their left legs way out right.
They stretched their right legs way out left. "In July," they said,.