Bryce Harper

[the 'stache]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

There are guys in baseball who you do not want to be on line grabbing a hot dog or a beer for . . you want to be in the seat watching every at bat. And you look ahead to see if he's batting next inning in timing your bathroom break. He is one of them. Ditto Trout. Ditto Cespedes. Ditto a hand full of other guys. That to me is the test that separates a star from an excellent player. Some of the "star" guys, i.e. Darryl Strawberry, Puig, ultimately don't have the career to back it up. I said it for years and stand by it: other than his farewell tour, no one around the country was buying tickets to see Derek Jeter play. Great great team player. Came though in the clutch remarkably in the post season. HOF material. No one ever bought a ticket in Cleveland or Detroit to see him play in June. Sometimes the big stars run their mouth a little much, i.e., Harvey, but these are the guys who put fannies in the seats, as Keith Hernandez would say.

When we had Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun batting back to back between 2007 and 2011, a lot of bladders went unrelieved at Miller Park for exactly the reason you mentioned. You didn't want to miss a single one of their at bats, and there was no way you were taking a trip to the can if both guys were guaranteed to make it up to the plate in the home half of the inning. In five years, they combined to hit 361 home runs, and drove in 1,096 runs. The Brewers weren't always good, but every game, even the ones we lost, were fun because there was always a chance one or both of them were going to hit a 440 foot bomb.