Bryce Harper: ‘Philly has a great fan base’.

Philadelphia is going to have a long span of time to wage this war with Bryce Harper.

For the time being, Harper tallied the first few wins in the battle and is being carefully coy about Philadelphia as a whole. Harper said the following after last night’s 2-1 victory in the Streets of Philadelphia (cue Bruce Springsteen):

“Yeah, I’m not even thinking about that,” he said. “This is a new series, a new day and I have a lot of respect for everybody in that other dugout. They have an All-Star team . . . guys who are All-Stars and who have been in this league for a long time. To come into this place and face Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee and Cole Hamels and all these guys . . . it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

[snip]

“Definitely, coming in here and playing the Phillies who have been a great team and coming into a place that has a lot of history and a great organization,” Harper said. “You’re playing in a place where Mike Schmidt and guys like that played. It’s going to be a lot of fun in here. They have a great fan base and we’re going to come in here and try to prove some people wrong.

This same ‘great’ fan base who may or may not be known to throw batteries?

I watched this game last night in it’s entirety. The jeers got louder every time Harper came to the plate. And after he reached base a few times the camera panned in closely to him. You could see that clearly this is a guy who loves being hated, a culmination of every villain you’ve never wanted to see rolling through your big league city. That’s why when someone tweeted this, it got the old RT from me:

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/c_street23/status/204734290066546689″]

I think Harper would say that has a nice ring to it.