The Ride
Sometimes, my love for baseball makes it hard to look myself in the mirror. I feel dirty. I feel unclean. I end up with those nagging, disturbing feelings that I have a hard time trying to identify. Maybe Embarrassment? Maybe Guilt? Shame? I don’t know. It’s probably “All of the above.” But that’s how I feel whenever I think about Bryce Harper swinging a bat. That’s how I feel every time I think about him running the bases. Or fielding a bunt. Or making a throw to second. Bryce Harper is a big problem for me. And, to be honest, I think the problem is only going to get worse before it gets any better. In fact, I know it will. And I’m not sure there’s anything that you, or I, or anyone else in the world can do about it. I am looking at the future, and the future looks bleak as hell, and we’re all impotent and powerless to change things as we strap ourselves in for the ride.
The Chat
I like Keith Law. I like his approach to baseball analysis. I don’t know the man personally, but I agree with a lot of the things he says. He seems sane, reasonable, and thoughtful. On Thursday, January 15, 2009, he held a chat on ESPN.com and fielded a question about Bryce Harper from one of his readers. They wanted to know:
Mark (Yonkers, NY): Who is Bryce Harper? What is his potential?
SportsNation Keith Law: #1 pick in the 2011 draft. Potential to be Joe Mauer with power.
Joe Mauer, as you probably know, was the first pick in the 2001 draft. He’s an All-Star, a Silver Slugger winner, and a Gold Glove winner. He’s the first catcher in American League history to win a batting title. He’s also the first catcher in American League history to win a second batting title. In fact, he’s the only catcher ever to lead the entire Major Leagues in batting average. And, it looks like he’s just getting started, because he’s only twenty-five years old and he’s won two of the last three AL batting titles.
Keith Law – Harvard grad, former writer for Baseball Prospectus, former special assistant to the General Manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, member of Scouts Inc., and featured ESPN columnist – publicly compared Bryce Harper to Joe Mauer. With power. Which is crazy, because it’s such an outsized projection.
But I suppose it’s even crazier because Bryce Harper is only a fifteen year-old sophomore, still playing his games in high school.
Too Young
In every society, there are individuals we protect because they are not old enough to protect themselves. They are Too Young. If a fifteen year-old boy stabs a man, he is not tried as an adult because the legal system has defined him as a minor, an individual who is not yet fully formed on an ethical level, and is therefore Too Young to suffer the full punishment of the law. If a thirteen year-old girl sleeps with a drunken accountant, he is guilty of statutory rape regardless of whether she initiated things, or if the act was consensual, because society has determined that the girl is Too Young to make an educated and informed decision about her own sexual activity. And so on. If a nineteen year-old soldier comes back from Iraq, he can’t stop by the bar to have a drink. You need to be sixteen to get your driver’s license. You need to be eighteen to vote. That’s how it works. There are laws, there are regulations, and there are unformed, developing, defenseless members of society who we have all agreed to protect, who we have all agreed to classify as Too Young.
How Bryce Harper fits into all of this is unclear, and probably up to the judgment of each of us as individuals. But I have to confess – I’ve got some questions. From where I stand, I don’t like the way things are shaping up. From where I stand, I don’t like the way things are playing out. And, worst of all, the end result of these realizations is that I’m not really sure that I like myself and the way I follow the sport of baseball.
The Scouting Reports
Keith Law is not the only person writing about Bryce Harper. Nor is he the first to do so.
On June 16, 2008, writing for Baseball America, Dave Perkins wrote
"To the dismay of every organization in baseball, Harper is only a freshman and won’t be draft eligible until 2011. Harper is perhaps the finest high school prospect local scouts have ever seen.”
On August 8, 2008, Rob Neyer called Bryce Harper “…perhaps the best 15-year-old baseball player in America.” He added “I don't pay much attention to amateur players because I have a hard enough time keeping the professionals straight. But every so often, some kid simply demands your attention, and apparently this kid is one of those.”
Neyer also added a link to Rich Lederer’s article for Baseball Analysts from August 7, 2008. In his piece, Lederer said “I would be surprised if there is a player who rivals Harper's talent. Yes, I believe Harper just may be the most outstanding prep in the country right now.” Lederer also attached a YouTube clip of the kid taking batting practice.
Keith Law, Rob Neyer, and Rich Lederer. ESPN and Baseball America. Good, solid, respectable sources. So maybe this doesn’t strike you as disturbing. Maybe you fail to see the problem with all of this. You want to know, What’s the big deal? Fair enough. Before you make up your mind, let me cite one more piece. Here are some direct quotes about Bryce Harper from the prominent prospects site, Perfectgame.org:
“The young 6th grader was by far the best prospect at the event. He hit two homeruns during the game and showed MLB average skills behind the plate.”
“…this young boy had something you can’t teach, he had a feel for the game that many lack even at the professional level. You knew he was going to be very special.”
“We would have had to give a 12 year old a 10.”
It takes some time for a couple of those quotes to sink it. I mean, they’re talking about a twelve year-old. A pre-teen. A sixth grader. And not only are they talking about him, they are saying that he “showed MLB average skills behind the plate” and that “he had a feel for the game that many lack even at the professional level.”
Twelve. Years. Old.
“He showed MLB average skills behind the plate.” Look, I realize that’s the third time I’ve written the exact same sentence in the course of half a page.
And, if you can figure out a better way for me to come to grips with it, you are certainly welcome to send me your suggestions. I could definitely use the help.
The Pictures
I don’t know. Sometimes a visual aid helps. I don’t spend a lot of time interacting with twelve year-olds. I don’t have kids. I don’t have nephews, nor nieces. I work in a Financial Office. I don’t have access to a lot of sixth graders in my daily routine. So I ran a simple Google Image Search for a “twelve year old boy” to help illustrate the point, to make the abstract concept feel a little more real. Here are four of the top hits for the search Twelve Year Old Boy: one, two, three, and four.
(Note: If you are skeptical – if you think I fanatically scoured the net then selectively handpicked the most effective images in order to achieve the most exploitative results – I encourage you to run the Google Image Search on your own. I’m pretty confident that our results will look awfully similar. End note.)
Those photos. Those kids. Do those boys look ready for hard scrutiny of the national baseball media? Or do they look like they want to dress up like a Ninja Turtle for Halloween? I know how I would answer that question. Do they look prepared for the weight and expectations of major league scouts? I mean, there are grown men who can’t handle those burdens. It seems almost immoral to impose them on fragile creatures still peering at adulthood from the far end of their telescopes.
The Book
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
--Opening lines to Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, a novel about an adult male’s unhealthy fascination with a twelve year-old child.
The Process
One day, your voice changes. One day, your face breaks out. One day, you suddenly realize that you’re interested in girls and that cooties aren’t all that terrifying anymore. It happens. It happened to all of us. We were all twelve years-old once. Maybe a handful of years ago. Maybe a handful of decades ago. We all had to figure things out. How to use deodorant. How to use a razor. How to talk to girls. It’s not unique. It’s universal. But I would hope, for your sake, that while you were making that awkward transition from lower school to the start of middle school, the leading baseball publications of the day weren’t claiming that you were already showing MLB average skills behind the plate.
(That’s four times now. Is it getting any easier for you to digest? Nah, me either.)
The World We Live In
At the start of the essay, I said that things are going to get worse. And I believe that to be true. I know it probably sounds like the cry of an alarmist. But I would argue that it’s the well-reasoned assessment of a realist.
In my day job at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University, I work with Merce Crosas, who is the Project Director of the Dataverse Network. Last week she told me her research indicated that the Library of Congress has 18 million books, 120 million items, and over 500 miles of shelving. All of this adds up to around 11 terabytes of data.
By comparison, as of 2003, there were approximately 160 terabytes of data on the worldwide web – over fourteen times greater than the scope of the world’s greatest library.
We live in an age exploding with information. And history has shown that the flow of information moves in a singular direction. We only gain more, we never have less.
Because of the constant stream of information that surrounds us all, my attempt to follow the sport of baseball force-feeds me facts that I did not request, pieces of trivia that I did not need. I know that Barry Zito likes to surf. That Bronson Arroyo likes grunge. That Manny Ramirez enjoys watching cartoons. That Alex Rodriguez is dating Madonna. That Wade Boggs confessed to having a sex addiction. That Kirby Puckett held his mistress as a hostage. I know these things. I don’t need to. But I do.
And in today’s world, we are informed of talented fifteen year-old baseball players. Amazing twelve year-old prospects. And as momentum grows, and the wave of data grows and grows, we will learn more. We will know more. Whether we want to or not. Tomorrow, it might be nine year-olds. The day after? Maybe five year-olds. There will be scouting reports. There will be blogs posting about the kid. There will be YouTube videos showcasing their abilities and skills. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one.
Things are going to get worse, my friend. Not better. Worse.
The Solution
I love the game of baseball. I like learning about it, knowing it, understanding it. I actively seek out information. I follow ESPN, I read The Boston Globe and Baseball America, and I contribute to The Hardball Times and Bill James Online. I think it’s important to be aware of young, promising players. Players in the Majors like Travis Snider. Players in the Minors like Mike Moustakas. International players like Yu Darvish. Players who are likely to be drafted like Steve Strasburg. This is part of the depth and the richness to the game that make it so enjoyable. The constant promise of hope. The eternal cycle of youth. Good young players are a wonderful part of the game. They always have been, they always will be.
But I am not in control of the information flow. I don’t set the limits. I don’t draw the lines. I don’t dictate what gets written, what gets revealed. Listen, I don’t want to know about twelve year-olds who are graded against Major Leaguers. Again, I don’t want to know about it – but I do. There are things in life that once learned, are impossible to unlearn. And as information grows more pervasive, as data becomes more democratized, as scouting grows deeper, and as my level of knowledge expands, I fear that I will slowly turn more and more into a monster who will figuratively cannibalize the young. Eight year-old shortstops. Three year-old lefthanders. Embryos with superior genetic aptitude. This is the natural evolution for the course we’re on. Where does it stop? Who’s to say that it stops at all?
It’s possible that the only way for me to end this loop of self-destructive personal reprehensibility is to stop following the game with the same passion, devotion, and curiosity that I carry today. Stop reading about baseball as much as I do, stop researching it as much, stop caring about it as much as I do today. But – let’s be honest here – that may be a sacrifice I’ll never be selfless enough to make. These are the compromises we make when we try to find ways to live with ourselves and the great, glorious, hyper-connected world we’ve built. Welcome to the Digital Age. Welcome to the Age of Information. That way madness lies.
If you have any thoughts you want to share, I would love to hear from you. I can be contacted at roeltorres@post.harvard.edu. Thank you.