Team USA carries on in the WBC minus its chief recruiter Bryce Harper

The rehabbing Harper has resisted texting his U.S. teammates, concerned about being “outside noise,” but his influence is all over this team.

Bryce Harper was the chief recruiter for the U.S. team.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

by Scott Lauber

Published March 21, 2023, 7:14 p.m. ET

MIAMI — It could have been argued, with little trace of jingoism, that this was the most star-laden batting order ever assembled for an international competition, USA Baseball’s version of the Dream Team. There were All-Stars and MVPs, right-handed hitters and lefties, sluggers and speedsters — and $200 million in combined 2023 salaries.

Yet someone was missing.

No offense to Cedric Mullins, who usually brings his dynamic blend of speed and power to the top of the Orioles’ lineup, but imagine if that was Bryce Harper standing in left field Tuesday night for the championship game of the fifth World Baseball Classic. An outfield of Harper, Mike Trout, and Mookie Betts? It would be a modern-day Aaron, Mays, and Mantle.

That was the idea last summer when Trout committed to playing for Team USA in the first incarnation of the two-week tournament since 2017. The first player that he texted: Harper, the face of the Phillies, who signed on to join him without giving a second thought to the torn ligament in his elbow that almost certainly would necessitate offseason surgery.

Together, Trout and Harper reached out to some of the biggest names in the sport — Betts and Trea Turner, Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, J.T. Realmuto and Pete Alonso — and landed nearly of their targets, notwithstanding Aaron Judge, who turned them down to stay with the Yankees.

If Trout was Team USA’s captain, Harper was its chief recruiter, a couple of fantasy baseball managers going for it all.

But reality intervened in November. Harper wound up having surgery, after all. The recovery would eat into the Phillies’ season, never mind the WBC schedule. The Dream Team would have to go on without him.

“We all wish that he was here,” Phillies teammate Kyle Schwarber said before the U.S. faced Shohei Ohtani and undefeated Japan for all the marbles. “It’s unfortunate.”

Harper said the other day that he’s mostly resisted texting his would-be Team USA brethren during the tournament because he didn’t want to be “outside noise.” He couldn’t resist reaching out late Saturday night after Turner, the Phillies’ new shortstop and Harper’s avowed “favorite player to watch,” crushed an eighth-inning grand slam to lead a stunning come-from-behind quarterfinal victory over Venezuela.

There was talk that Harper might show up in Miami for the final. He has been encamped with the Phillies on the opposite coast of Florida. But if Harper was contemplating hopping a quick flight, he didn’t inform Team USA manager Mark DeRosa — or even Schwarber, for that matter, who said Tuesday that he hadn’t heard from Harper since the WBC began.

And while Phillies icons Jimmy Rollins and Ryan Howard were among the who’s who of former players who hobnobbed around the batting cage while Ohtani put on another display of upper-deck power before the game, there wasn’t any sign of Harper.

But there were echoes of Harper throughout the tournament beyond his absence from the middle of the Americans’ lineup.

To wit: Did you see Ohtani ditch his helmet as he rounded first base on the leadoff double that started off Japan’s decisive rally in a 6-5 walkoff victory over Mexico in the semifinals? Harper made that move his signature on his first major-league hit in 2012, also a hustle double. And Ohtani’s arms-flailing scream to the Japan dugout when he reached second base was straight out of Harper’s “this is my house” routine in the playoffs last year.

If DeRosa has a regret from his first experience as a manager, it’s that he didn’t invite Harper to spend any time with Team USA. It may not have worked out anyway. The Americans gathered for a pre-tournament minicamp in Phoenix on March 7, two days before Harper reported to Phillies camp.

But given Harper’s role in compelling more players to raise their hands for the WBC and his stature as one of the sport’s megastars, DeRosa wishes he had connected with him.

“Shame on me,” said DeRosa, who played with Harper with the Washington Nationals in 2012, Harper’s rookie year. “I was talking to J.T. and Trea and Schwarbs. We should have had him come down here. I should have reached out to him and had him come walking through the clubhouse. He would have been all over this thing.

“I kind of figured he was going to have surgery [last summer]. I’m like, ‘There’s probably no way he’s playing with us.’ But having him as a teammate at 19 years old and just talking to him and picking his brain throughout the course of his career and seeing what he’s become has been awesome. I would have loved to have had him be a part of this.”

Maybe next time.

When the WBC returns in three years, Harper will be 33. And if Team USA was able to knock off the favored Japanese team for its second consecutive WBC title, Trout, Betts, and the rest might be up for taking aim at another one.

“Hopefully when they do it again,” Harper said, “I’ll be cool enough to do it.”