Top 10 Bryce Harper moments as a Phillie: From Mr. 300 to ‘attaboy’ to Bedlam at the Bank

Five years ago this week, Bryce Harper chose the Phillies.

And the franchise entered a new era.

It took a few seasons, two managerial changes, and a new leader in the front office to complete the Phillies’ transformation into a World Series contender. But when Harper showed up for that first news conference atop the dugout in Clearwater, Fla., he brought something the team lacked for most of the preceding decade: star power.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper, $330 million bargain? Sizing up his first five years with the Phillies, and what’s ahead.

Harper isn’t the best player in baseball, though he was in 2021. But he’s arguably the most magnetic (teammates call him “The Showman”) and, after the last two Octobers, undeniably the most clutch.

And if there was a playbook for the city’s star athletes to hike their Q-Score among fans, Harper has mostly run the “Philly Special” over and over, with his Phanatic cleats and headband, jersey logo smooches, and shoutouts of WIP-FM (94.1) callers.

In the latest installment of The Inquirer’s Top 10 series, here’s a look at 10 of No. 3′s most indelible Phillies moments:

Even Harper’s milestones drip with drama.

With one on, two out, and the Phillies trailing by a run in the eighth inning last Aug. 30, Harper came to the plate against tough Angels lefty Matt Moore. He went deep, naturally, to give the Phillies a lead, record the 300th homer of his career, and take an emotional curtain call before a packed house at Citizens Bank Park.

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper at 300 homers. How he got here, and what's next?

Harper labeled it a “stepping-stone” as much as a milestone, and he wasn’t being immodest. He made his major league debut as a 19-year-old with the Nationals in 2012 and became the fourth-youngest active player to hit No. 300.

There are almost certainly larger, rounder numbers in his future.

Just about everyone in Citizens Bank Park last Sept. 28 could see that Harper checked his swing on a full-count pitch in the third inning.

Well, everyone except third-base umpire Ángel Hernández.

Hernández ruled on appeal that Harper swung, setting off a tantrum for the ages. Incredulous at the call, Harper stomped out to third base, hollering at Hernández the whole time. Hernández ejected him, and after more yelling, Harper walked back to the dugout and heaved his helmet into the stands.

» READ MORE: The Bryce brand: Phillies’ Harper is intimately involved with how he’s marketed, and it’s paying off

“I mean,” Harper said later, “it was just bad.”

But out of Harper’s outrage came a sweet moment. Hayden Dorfman, 10, wound up with the helmet after his father retrieved it. Through ballpark security, Harper got it back, autographed it, and returned it to the young fan.

All it took was one pitch.

In the first inning of the first World Series game played at Citizens Bank Park in 13 years — 4,747 nights, to be precise — Harper stroked a first-pitch curveball from Astros starter Lance McCullers to right field for a two-run homer.

» READ MORE: A decade into his career, examining Bryce Harper's case for Cooperstown

The Phillies tied a World Series record with five home runs in their 7-0 Game 3 rout, including Alec Bohm’s leadoff shot in the second inning. While Bohm was on deck, Harper called him over to the dugout and said something in his ear, prompting lipreading social media sleuths to guess McCullers was tipping his pitches.

It turned out to be only gamesmanship. Bohm later confessed Harper was “just messing” with McCullers, which somehow only seemed to strengthen the NLCS MVP’s claim to being the new Mr. October.

If it wasn’t enough of a challenge last year to go from the operating table to a major-league game in 160 days, Harper layered another wrinkle on top of his eyeblink-fast recovery from Tommy John elbow surgery.

He learned a new position.

After the Phillies lost Rhys Hoskins to a season-ending ACL tear and fill-in Darick Hall to thumb surgery, Harper volunteered to play first base, beginning a three-month instruction with infield coach Bobby Dickerson before he was even cleared by doctors to start throwing.

» READ MORE: They’ve gone through it, and are amazed by Bryce Harper’s speedy return: ‘He’s a different breed’

Harper’s crash course culminated with a July 21 start at first base in Cleveland, where he crashed into the camera well in the third inning in pursuit of a foul pop fly. (He caught it, by the way.)

The Phillies liked the look of Harper at first base so much that they proposed he stay there for good. He agreed. Last week, he called the mid-career position switch “a new adventure for me.”

Harper isn’t only the face of the franchise. He’s the recruiting director.

Since he signed his 13-year, $330 million contract, Harper hasn’t been shy about lobbying owner John Middleton and the front office, as few players in few organizations could, to acquire players whom he most admires.

Sure enough, the roster is filled with Friends of Bryce. From re-signing J.T. Realmuto before the 2021 season, to the dual free-agent additions of Kyle Schwarber and Nick Castellanos in 2022, and the $300 million plunge for Trea Turner before last season, the Phillies are undeniably Bryce’s Bunch.

» READ MORE: How Bryce Harper planted the flag in Philly and got his friends to follow: ‘Cool to see guys picking the Phillies again’

“This was the plan,” said Bryson Stott, who grew up with Harper in Las Vegas. “He said he wanted to take that lower [average annual value] so they could get guys around him. Him just manifesting that and putting that out there in the world and it actually coming true, he does that a lot. It’s pretty cool to see.”

It also helps explain why Harper is hoping to restructure his contract.

(Harper’s white whale: Mike Trout. After hinting in March 2019 that he would recruit Trout to come home to Philadelphia when he became a free agent, Trout signed a 12-year extension with the Angels two weeks later.)

Harper put up enormous numbers in 2021: .309 average, .429 on-base percentage, 35 homers, 101 runs, 100 walks, and league-leading 42 doubles, .615 slugging, and 1.044 OPS. He won his second NL MVP award, receiving 17 of 30 first-place votes.

But before all that, he took a 97 mph fastball to the face.

It happened on the first pitch of the sixth inning on April 28, 2021, in St. Louis. As Cardinals lefty Génesis Cabrera’s heater zoomed toward him, Harper took his right hand off the bat and raised his arm like a shield. Maybe it prevented a direct hit.

» READ MORE: Overrated? Underrated? Just consider NL MVP Bryce Harper one of the best of his generation

Harper walked off the field with blood smeared across his left cheek near his nose. Later that night, after getting checked out at a local hospital, he said on Instagram, “Everything feels good. Face is still there. We’re all good.”

Incredibly, Harper missed only three games.

Maybe we should’ve seen it coming.

In Game 1 of the 2022 wild-card series, Harper worked a one-out walk against flame-throwing closer Ryan Helsley to help fuel a six-run ninth inning and stun the Cardinals. But for weeks, his timing was off. After returning in late August from a broken thumb, he was a tick behind on fastballs, out in front on breaking pitches. He was struggling.

There wasn’t much, then, other than an encouraging six-pitch walk, to suggest Harper was about to go on an October heater.

» READ MORE: ‘We are not losing this game’: How Bryce Harper’s mantra is setting a tone for the Phillies

But Harper led off the second inning of Game 2 by jumping on a first-pitch curveball from Miles Mikolas and cranking it into the right-field seats. It started the scoring in a sweep-completing 2-0 victory and a six-homer postseason binge in which Harper slugged .746.

It also marked the first time Harper’s team advanced in a postseason. In four previous series, all with the Nationals, he went home after the first round.

Three-quarters of the way through his first season here, Harper was putting up solid, if unspectacular numbers. But other than homering for his first Phillies hit in the second game of the season, he hadn’t authored a truly signature moment.

Until this.

» READ MORE: Ten years (already?) of Bryce Harper: From teen phenom to ‘I grew up watching you play’

Trailing 5-1 in the ninth inning Aug. 15 against the Cubs, the Phillies scored twice and loaded the bases. Harper crushed a sinker from lefty Greg Holland 413 feet into the second deck in right field. He sprinted around the bases and charged like a battering ram into a mob of teammates at home plate to cap a 7-5 comeback that had to be seen to be believed.

John Kruk’s pitch-perfect reaction on the telecast: “Oh my god!”

“I love those moments,” Harper said. “I love those opportunities.”

Once word leaked that Braves shortstop Orlando Arcia celebrated a Game 2 victory in last year’s division series by running around the clubhouse and hollering, “Attaboy, Harper” — the game ended with Harper getting doubled off first base after a leaping catch in center field — Phillies players had one question.

“They looked at me,” Harper said, “and they were like, ‘What are you going to do?’”

Uh, what do you think?

» READ MORE: Bryce Harper is committed to Philly. How much will it cost the Phillies to keep him here forever?

Harper went deep in back-to-back at-bats — part of a six-homer blitz that tied a postseason record — in a 10-2 throttling of the Braves that put the Phillies on the verge of returning to the NLCS.

Oh, and he shot two Arctic-cold stares at Arcia as he circled the bases.

“Yeah,” Harper admitted, “I mean, I stared right at him.”

As reliever Matt Strahm put it, “There’s no need to throw fuel on that guy’s fire. He’ll happily take any that he gets. But, I mean, thanks.”

With the Phillies trailing by one run in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the 2022 NLCS, Harper paused at the dugout steps before taking his place on deck and said six words aloud to hitting coach Kevin Long.

“Let’s give them something to remember.”

And then, well, let’s just say they’ve played major league baseball in Philadelphia for 141 years, and Harper’s pennant-clinching two-run homer will be talked about for the next 141.

» READ MORE: How does Bryce Harper thrive under playoff pressure? He’s lived with it since he was 16.

So, where were you when Padres reliever Robert Suarez’s two-strike sinker disappeared over the left-field wall and the Phillies returned to the World Series?

“All the things we thought [Harper] was have turned out to be true,” Middleton said. “There are no disappointments. Sometimes you go through that process, you think you understand somebody, and what you really get is a little bit different. There’s nothing different with Bryce. He’s just committed to winning. He’ll do whatever it takes.”