He’s still a teenager, but Bryce Harper is already on the fast-track to being a baseball superstar.
The 19-year-old made his debut with the Washington Nationals late last month, but his rise to fame has been steady since high school.
His mad skills on the diamond have paid off – literally. He has a whopping $9.9 million five-year contract with the Nationals.
Born in Las Vegas on October 16, 1992 as Bryce Aron Max Harper, the phenom now comes in at 6’3″ and 215 pounds. He attended Las Vegas High School, where he was dubbed the best high school baseball player in the U.S., and the Mozart of baseball.
As a high school sophomore in January 2009, he hit a very impressive 502-foot (153-metre) home run at Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay.
(See the hit at 4:22 in the video above.)
Even Harper himself was in disbelief. “I was like, ‘Wow, did that really just happen?’ I just, like, looked up, like, ‘Holy crap.'”
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If you think that’s good – Harper has actually done better. In his freshman season, he struck an incredible 570 feet that cleared the field at his high school. Though, ESPN reported his coaches may have been generous with that measurement by “several feet.”
Harper dropped out of high school two years early to go to the College of Southern Nevada, a junior college with a highly-ranked baseball program. He later took a test for his GED (general education development), the equivalent of a high school diploma, so he could play for CSN’s baseball team.
His premature exit from high school also made him eligible for the Major League Baseball draft in 2010, a year earlier than if he had stayed.
As an amateur in 2010, Harper recorded 31 home runs, easily smashing the previous record of 12. It helped him win the Golden Spikes Award, earning him the title of the country’s top amateur baseball player that year. He was also named the Scenic West Athletic Conference Player of the Year.
In 2011, MLB.com ranked Harper at #3 among the top 50 prospects. He made his minor league debut on April 7 of the year, hitting his first professional home run six days later.
His first three-hit game was on April 22, 2011. A few weeks later on May 11, 2011, he recorded his first career grand slam. And on June 2, 2011, he had his first career walk-off home run.
Baseball runs in the Harper family. His older brother, Bryan, is a left-handed pitcher who was drafted by the Nationals, but he did not end up signing with the team.
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