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Right before Nationals series, Bryce Harper says he wishes he started his career with Phillies

Bryce Harper began his career with the Nationals. (Mark Goldman/Icon Sportswire)

If the timing of Bryce Harper’s message Sunday afternoon wasn’t on purpose, it was a hell of a coincidence.

Harper — who is about as well-trained in dealing with the media as any player in the sport — said after Sunday’s game that he loves playing in Philadelphia so much that he wishes he began his career with the Phillies.

“Everybody talks about it, right, like, ‘Oh it’s one of the hardest places to play and free agents don’t want to come here because it’s hard.’ But they just don’t understand,” Harper said on the Phillies Radio Network, as transcribed by Kevin Kinkead of Crossing Broad. “They don’t get it. They don’t get what it’s like to play here day in and day out, having the fan base that we do, and the way they go about it. [It’s] hard, right? But it’s incredible. I wouldn’t want a fan base, I mean I’m standing here getting chills because it’s like, I wouldn’t want a fan base any other way. They want you to work hard, they want you to play hard, they want you to perform, they’re spending their hard-earned dollar to come watch you play each night, but they have feel. They have feel for it also.

“I mean, I have so much emotion toward it because it’s just, I absolutely frickin’ love it,” Harper continued. “I don’t want to play anywhere else. I wish I started my career here, just the way it is and how lucky we are to do this. Just such an incredible moment for him [Trea Turner] to be able to go out there and know that the fans have his back and have our teams’ back. That should be something for us too, as a team, to take advantage of and know like, they got us. No matter what, they got us. Being able to know that on a personal level and on a team level as well, there’s nothing greater. I can go on and on, we just have such a great fan base and I am so thankful to be here and be a part of it.”

Coincidentally — or perhaps not — the Washington Nationals are in town for a four- game series slated to begin Monday night, if the weather cooperates. Harper, of course, was selected by the Nationals with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2010 MLB Draft. He won the NL Rookie of the Year in 2012 and the NL MVP in 2015 while playing for the Nationals.

While they wouldn’t get over the hump until the year after he left in free agency, the Nationals made the playoffs four times during Harper’s seven seasons with the team. By all accounts, Harper entered free agency after the 2018 season hoping to remain in D.C. for the entirety of his career. Even when that didn’t happen, he still was very gracious towards his former teammates when they won a World Series in 2019.

The guess here is that Harper saying he wishes he could have begun his career in Philadelphia comes down to two things: His genuine appreciation of Phillies fans, and his preference for the the organizational powers that be for his second team.

The atmosphere at Citizens Bank Park — even before the bump of last year’s postseason run — is significantly better than Nationals Park. And it should be. D.C. has many more transplants than Philadelphia, so there’s more of a wide variance in terms of what teams their residents support. The Phillies have also been around since 1883, as opposed to the Nationals, who may as well have established in 2005. It’s not as though a noteworthy chunk of Montreal Expos fans followed the franchise when they relocated. It takes multiple generations to build a fanbase, and the Nationals have been around for approximately one.

Probably more important is that Harper likely resents how the Nationals handled his departure. Nationals’ ownership cornered Harper — without his agent, Scott Boras, present — and offered him a 10-year/$300 million deal in September of 2018, which included deferrals into the 2050s. A better offer never came, much to the surprise of Harper, per the reporting of The Washington Post‘s Barry Svrluga. When Harper didn’t jump at the offer presented to him in the midst of a rain delay, the Nationals pivoted and used their resources instead on LHP Patrick Corbin.

In an alternate universe, Harper would have been on the Nationals for their 2019 World Series title and likely surpassed Ryan Zimmerman and Max Scherzer as the greatest player that the team has had since relocating to Washington.

Instead, he’s in the midst of his fifth season with the Phillies. Harper has added another NL MVP to his resume as a Phillie, and also got to play in the World Series for the first time in 2022. In this universe, Harper will go into the Hall of Fame with a Phillies cap on his plaque, and it doesn’t seem like he would want it any other way.