Hagerstown made most of Harper’s first step up ladder

Last week, Bill Farley got in his car and drove 145 miles from Hagerstown, Md., to Harrisburg, Pa., to watch 18-year-old Bryce Harper play another game as a baseball professional.

Farley is general manager of the Hagerstown Suns, the Class-A franchise for which Las Vegas native Harper played the first 72 games of his pro career. Farley was under no obligation to drive to Pennsylvania to watch Harper take his hacks against the Erie Seawolves. In fact, having just endured Harper's Bazaar, this veritable circus spawned by his minor league career, one might think Farley would have grown weary of it, and him.

Not so. Not a chance.

Bill Farley says he is a Bryce Harper fan.

So there's at least one. Take note, Internet scoundrels.

Given Farley and Harper are both "Property of the Washington Nationals," as it might have said on those gray T-shirts of olden days, perhaps it is to be expected that Farley would speak highly of Harper, for whom the Nats paid a hefty $9.9 million bonus when they signed him out of junior college last year, because he wasn't old enough to be signed out of high school. But to repeat, Farley was no under obligation to drive to Double-A Harrisburg to watch Harper play. I have heard that traffic on Interstate 81 at that time of day can be a bear.

Regardless of how I tried to steer Farley toward the path of Harper's alleged arrogance and petulance, he wanted to take me down his primrose lane.

Yes, he was willing to sign autographs when we asked. No, we didn't ask him to sign a lot. Yes, his T-shirt jersey was a big seller at the Suns' gift shop. No, we didn't ask him to speak at the Hagerstown Rotary Club. Yes, there was a buzz in the ballpark on Tuesday nights. No, it had nothing to do with Kraft Singles Night with the Kannapolis Intimidators in town.

It had only to do with No. 34, Bryce Harper.

"The kids loved him," the 31-year-old Farley said. "So did the baseball loyalists."

So did the hustlers and the make-a-quick-buck artists, who asked him to autograph six baseballs and nine trading cards. But when Harper, who hit .318 with 14 homers and 46 RBIs at Hagerstown, caught on and would sign only one, they called him arrogant and petulant.

Harper's impact on attendance in Hagerstown was dramatic.

"Where you really saw the difference was on off (attendance) nights," Farley said. "Where we were getting crowds of 500, 600 or 700, we were getting thousands."

Hagerstown Municipal Stadium opened on May 30, 1930. It is not The House That Harper Built. It is the house that won't seem the same, now that he has moved up the company ladder.

The kids and baseball loyalists share that view. The hustlers and the make-a-quick-buck artists probably would tell you otherwise. The Hagerstown media? Mostly depended on whether Harper felt like talking or not.

"He showed glimpses of both brilliance and immaturity and a propensity to cause controversy," wrote Bob Parasiliti, who covers the Suns for the Hagerstown Herald-Mail. "He also showed he can play the game of baseball -- not perfectly, but that is why he was sent to Hagerstown."

Parasiliti added that Harper's parting shot about Hagerstown did not go over well.

I found the interview to which he must have been referring. "Bryce Harper Hated Hagerstown" read the headline. I watched the interview. Here's what Harper said. "Coming from Hagerstown, the last 20 games, I was really not too focused. I wanted to get out of there. I was doing things I really shouldn't have been doing ..."

Bryce Harper did not say he hated Hagerstown.

Those Internet scoundrels.

It is the nature of people in my business to turn against those who do cooperate with interview requests, even if there are dozens, hundreds, or, in Harper's case, perhaps even thousands. This is where I would point out the great sports writer Jim Murray rarely used direct quotations. Nor did Shakespeare.

Anybody who has seen Bryce Harper swing the bat or run the bases can see what this 18-year-old is all about without making him have to say it for the 1,349th time.

At least that's what Bill Farley thinks.

"It was really a neat experience to have him," Farley said. "He breathed a bit of life into everything we're doing out here."

As for Suns attendance in the four home games since the Baseball Bieber has moved on, yeah, it has dropped off noticeably. Farley said the weather was lousy. That was part of it. But to paraphrase Bill Withers, ain't no sunshine when Bryce Harper is gone.

They'll discover that in Harrisburg, too. And in Erie.

In checking on the Erie club's nickname, I found a big photo of Harper on the home page of its website. "AUGUST 5-7" screamed bold letters. "Vs. Harrisburg Senators. Featuring No. 1 draft pick BRYCE HARPER."

It said Bryce Harper was coming to Jerry Uht Park and that I should get my tickets now.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.