If Bryce Harper was like a lot of 18-year-olds, this past March he might have been thinking about his last days of high school and his senior prom date. Instead, he was in big league camp with the Washington Nationals. His parents were in Florida to see him compete against professionals a decade older, rather than attending his graduation.
This is where they bumped into Davey Johnson, who was a special assistant for the Nationals at that time but was soon to become manager. And Johnson offered a prediction. "I told them that he would get at-bats in the big leagues when he was 19 years old," Johnson recalled last week, over the phone. "He's that good."
Johnson's credentials for projecting the capabilities of young talent are impeccable. In 1984, he lobbied for the Mets to promote a 19-year-old who had never pitched above Class A to the big leagues, and that summer, Dwight Gooden struck out 276 batters before he turned 20.
Because of Johnson's role in the ascension of Gooden, any conversation about Harper naturally turns to the former Mets right-hander, and Johnson does not run from the comparison; rather, he embraces it.
To be convinced that Gooden could make the jump to the big leagues, Johnson recalled, he had to see that the pitcher's skills had rounded out. He had to know that Gooden could throw his secondary pitches for strikes, so that he wouldn't be wholly reliant on his fastball. "If a pitcher has big league stuff and can command," Johnson said, "he can pitch at any level."
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Buster Olney
ESPN Insider- Senior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com
- Reporter for ESPN Sunday Night Baseball
- Author of "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty"
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Buster Olney
Buster Olney is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine. He began covering baseball in 1989, as the Nashville Banner's beat reporter assigned to the Triple-A Nashville Sounds. Later, he covered the San Diego Padres (1993-94), the Baltimore Orioles ('95-96), the New York Mets ('97) and the Yankees ('98-2001). Olney joined ESPN The Magazine in 2003, after six years at The New York Times, and he's the author of two books. "The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty," is a Times best-seller, and "How Lucky You Can Be", about basketball coaching legend Don Meyer, was released in 2011.
He grew up in central Vermont collecting baseball cards and listening to Red Sox, Expos, Phillies and Pirates radio broadcasts, and was a rabid fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He graduated from Vanderbilt University the same year as hoops legend Will Perdue, and ranks among the all-time leading scorers in pickup basketball at Memorial Gym. He claims to have witnessed the Commodores' winning football season in 1982 (although anthropologists have not yet confirmed this).
Olney also contributes to ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight."
Follow Buster on Twitter: @Buster_ESPN
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