Bryce Harper turns boos from Nationals fans into cheers from Phillies fans with home run, double in return to Nationals Park | Bob Brookover

WASHINGTON – We had heard that Washington had gotten meaner than ever in the 21st century, but it was still stunning to see Bryce Harper get the Jayson Werth Citizens Bank Park treatment on steroids Tuesday night at Nationals Park.

Most of the speculation ahead of Harper’s return to his former home seemed to lean toward a mixed reaction to his introduction for the first time as a member of the Phillies. Harper even extended an olive branch Tuesday morning, sending out an Instagram post on his @bryceharper3 account that thanked the city and its fans for making him “one of your own for the entire time I was part of the Nationals organization.”

The response from Nats fans: Booooooooooooo! Booooooooooooo! Booooooooooooo!

In case you weren’t counting, it was 13 ooooooooooooos, one for every year Harper signed with the Phillies as a free agent. It was some serious pent-up anger, the kind Philadelphians are often accused of harboring toward players who shunned them. Players like Werth and J.D. Drew and Terrell Owens.

It will be impressive if Nationals fans can maintain this kind of hatred for the rest of this season and the entire next decade, because it was on the same level as the Drew reception at Veterans Stadium in 1999. Fortunately, there was no battery incident and maybe that’s because the right-field bleachers behind Harper were filled mostly with Phillies fans who would make themselves heard before the wildly entertaining evening was over.

“It was pretty entertaining,” manager Gabe Kapler said after an 8-2 victory pushed the Phillies to their first 4-0 start since 1915, the first World Series season in franchise history.

Had Harper re-signed with the Nationals, he surely would have been booed when Washington made its first appearance in Philadelphia early next week, but it is hard to imagine that the Phillies’ faithful would have been armed with as much vitriol as the Nationals’ fans hurled at their former superstar.

It should be noted here that Harper received $30 million more from the Phillies than the Nationals reportedly offered near the end of the 2018 season. Nationals fans should understand that principal owner Mark Lerner had an opportunity to sign Harper before any other team had a chance to bid.

It’s the same way Phillies fans should have felt when Jayson Werth received considerably more money to sign a seven-year deal with the Nationals in 2010 after he had gone from a minor-league free agent to a postseason hero in his four seasons in Philadelphia.

Harper, based on what he said before Tuesday night’s game, knew it was over with the Nationals before Christmas Day, and he had come to terms with the team’s decision.

“We went down and met with the Lerners two days before Christmas, and I thought the meeting went great and then it just didn’t happen,” Harper said. “I thought, on both sides, it was kind of mutual, and it didn’t really bother me from both sides. I felt, ‘OK, they have two great young outfielders and they have a great plan, and they’re going to do what they want to do for their organization.’ I said all last year, 'If I’m part of it great. If I’m not and they want to move on, I’m fine with that as well.’

“I have no hard feelings against the Nationals, the Lerners and the Lerner family. They always treated me with the utmost respect, and it has been fun playing for an organization that really cares about their players and their organization and their fans, as well.”

In his 14-minute news conference Tuesday afternoon, Harper expressed a genuine love for his time with the Nationals, but if he had any plans to tip his cap to the fans who mostly adored him for seven seasons, they were discarded when the starting lineups were announced shortly before the start of the rain-delayed game.

That’s when the boos started, and they continued right through a video tribute to Harper on the giant scoreboard in right field. When it ended, the cameras caught Harper leaning against the bench in the visiting dugout. It would have been wrong for Harper to tip his cap after such a greeting, and he opted against it.

Some great theater was about to follow.

The boos cascaded down on Harper again in the first, when he stepped to the plate for a highly anticipated confrontation with Nationals ace Max Scherzer. Round 1 went to Scherzer when he struck out Harper on a 2-2 changeup. The ballpark erupted with cheers.

Two innings later, Harper was booed again as he made his way to the plate. Round 2 went to Scherzer again as Harper’s seven-pitch at-bat ended with another strikeout on a crisp cutter from the three-time Cy Young Award winner.

“It’s always going to be tough going up against Max,” Harper said. “He threw me a 2-2 changeup -- nasty -- and then a 3-2 cutter as well that was absolutely nasty. I ended up going up there the third time thinking, 'I got to get a knock off this guy because he’s going go text me and wear me out.”

The tide turned Harper’s way two innings later when he lined a 1-2 curveball from Scherzer into right field for a double. It extended the inning and helped push Scherzer’s pitch count to 96 by the end of the inning, leading to the pitcher’s departure.

“I thought as a team collectively we had a great night of getting Max to 95 pitches in five innings like we wanted to do,” Harper said.

In the sixth, with lefty Matt Grace on in relief, Jean Segura cleared the bases with a three-run double that gave the Phillies a 5-0 lead, and Harper followed with an RBI single to left field to make it 6-0. A large contingent of Phillies fans, many of whom were stationed in the lower right-field bleachers, started celebrating and chanting.

First, it was “MVP, MVP,” and then “Let’s go Phillies” and finally “We’ve got Harper!”

When Harper went to right field ahead of the bottom of the sixth inning, he finally took a bow in recognition of the appreciation that had come from the right-field bleachers. He capped it off with a double fist pump.

He was not done yet. In the eighth, Harper sent a 2-2 fastball from Jeremy Hellickson into the second-deck seats for his third home run of the season. He flipped his bat in the direction of the Nationals’ dugout before taking his trip around the bases.

Suddenly, the boos did not seem to matter much any more.

“I had 500 Phillies fans out there (in right field) that I was able to tip my cap to so I was pumped about that,” Harper said.

Keep this up for the next 13 years and the Nationals’ fans are sure to hate Bryce Harper forever.