Harper really worth $330 million? Really? Really?!?!???

The news came down this afternoon that the Philadelphia Phillies signed Bryce Harper for 13 years and an astounding $330 million has sent shockwaves through the entire world of sports.

It’s a contract that just doesn’t make any sense. I understand that Harper is only 26 years old and the majority of his career is obviously ahead of him. I also understand that he has star quality and gets treated like a superstar.

But is Harper that good? Good enough to get the biggest contract in the history of professional sports?

The answer is simple: Hell no.

Here’s proof. As they say, numbers don’t lie, especially when it comes to baseball statistics.

2012: .270 batting average with 22 HR and 59 RBI, but was named the National League Rookie of the Year.

2013: .274 batting average with 20 HR and 58 RBI

2014: .273 with 13 HR and 32 RBI

2015: breakout MVP season, where he batted .330 with 42 HR, 99 RBI, a league best 118 runs scored, .460 on base percentage and .649 slugging percentage.

2016: .243 with 24 HR and 86 RBI

2017: .319 with 29 HR and 87 RBI

2018: .249 with 34 HR and 100 RBI

For Harper’s seven-year MLB career, he’s managed a .279 career batting average with 184 homers and 521 RBI.

Now, are those numbers deserving of that contract he signed today? There’s no way anyone could admit to that, even the most loyal of phucking Phillies phans.

Today’s contract makes you wonder. If Bryce Harper can wrangle out a deal like that, then what in God’s holy name is a player like Mike Trout worth? Or Mookie Betts? Francisco Lindor? You get the drift. 

You might as well just load up the armored cars with cash and back them into the driveways of those guys’ homes. I can’t even begin to fathom the contract that Trout could command. I know one thing’s for sure. It would have a whole mess of zeroes at the end of the total.

And of course, the so-called geniuses that have nothing better to do than complain about what the Mets do or don’t do were at full force on the call-in radio stations today, lambasting new Mets GM Brodie Van Wagenen  for not making a solid offer to Harper and for allowing the Phillies to sign him.

Like this signing was the end of the world for the Mets. How could the Mets let Harper go? How could the Mets be so stupid to let him go to the Phillies? The Mets were being cheap once again.

On and on, the complaints rained down, much like they did when the Mets didn’t re-sign Daniel Murphy.

I wasn’t so livid as most when the Mets let Murphy walk. He had a great playoff run for the Mets in 2015, helping the orange and blue bring home their fifth National League pennant. But Murphy was basically a flawed position player with bad baseball instincts. No one could have ever predicted that Murphy would become such a dominant hitter, not even the Nationals who signed him.

But in this case, not making a legitimate offer to Harper, I say “Bravo.” In fact, I might have to set off Roman candles and skyrockets in celebration, because he’s perhaps the most overrated baseball player of my lifetime. There isn’t an aspect to the game of baseball that Bryce Harper is excellent at, except for taking off his batting helmet and tossing his head back so his hair doesn’t get all sloppy.

Bryce Harper might make the Phillies slightly better. And I say slightly. I don’t think he makes them 330 million times better, that’s for sure.

Can Harper hit 50 homers there? Potentially, there’s a chance, if he stays healthy. But that’s a big if, because in his seven-year career, he’s made nine trips to the disabled list. His only two injury-free years were 2015 and last year.

Let’s see what happens. I could be wrong. Hell, I could be wrong. As everyone who knows me well enough to know one fact about me – I’m wrong and I’m wrong a lot.

So let’s see if I’m wrong about the Mets, about Harper, about everything. Right now, I think it’s a signing that will help the Phillies sell a lot more tickets, a signing that will fuel the fire of the feud between the Nats and Phils and will do nothing to help the causes of the top teams in the NL East. The Mets had done a good enough job improving the team overall before sticking their toes into the waters of the shark infested Bryce Harper ocean.

In closing, it’s an insanely ridiculous contract, overpaying for a player who has been more hype than production. And now he gets a chance to produce more hype in the City of Brotherly Love for the next 13 years. With $330 million, he can buy a ton of Pat’s Cheesesteaks, perhaps one for every strikeout he registers over the next 13 years.

The other piece of sports news that came down Thursday was a little less powerful, but still a bit noteworthy.

Jason Witten, without question one of the best tight ends to ever play pro football and a sure-fire lock to be enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton sometime whenever his playing days are done, delayed that inevitable a little longer when he announced that he was leaving the safe comforts of the Monday Night Football booth to make a return to the Dallas Cowboys for the 2019 season, signing a one-year contract worth $3.5 million that could increase to $5 million with incentives.

“The fire inside of me to compete and play this game is just burning too strong,” Witten said in a statement released by the Cowboys. “This team has a great group of rising young stars, and I want to help them make a run at a championship. This was completely my decision, and I am very comfortable with it. I’m looking forward to getting back in the dirt.”

Witten, who will turn 37 years old in May, will come back to the Cowboys after sitting out the entire 2018 campaign, a year where he made a complete mess of himself in the broadcast booth, helping to turn one of the most reputable and respected broadcasts in all of pro sports into a total laughingstock.

Almost on a weekly basis, Witten was caught with his pants down, being so totally unprepared, firing off mixed metaphors and malaprops with the same level of ferocity that he did as a dominant pass catcher.

Witten caught 1,152 passes for 12,448 yards and 68 touchdowns during his 15-year career. He ranks fourth all-time in pass receptions and was named to the Pro Bowl team 11 times. Four times, Witten went over 1,000 yards in receiving yardage and four times, he caught enough 90 or more receptions.  In 2012, Witten caught an astounding 110 passes for 1,029 yards, earning overall All-Pro honors. No one will ever question his talents on the field.

But without any prior training or announcing experience, Witten was so totally overmatched. The pairing of former players Witten and Booger McFarland with veteran ESPN announcer Joe Tessitore was a disgrace, with McFarland sitting on a elevated cart that moved along the sideline and Witten offering up comments from the booth that rarely made sense to football fans and novice football followers alike.

In fact, some media pundits and columnists were already predicting Witten’s demise from the MNF broadcast team with some reports hinting ESPN trying to lure Peyton Manning into the fold (even though the elder brother has vowed his intentions of staying away from broadcasting while Eli was still playing for the Giants).

Perhaps Witten saw the handwriting on the wall about his status with the MNF crew and decided to jump the gun a little by making a comeback before ESPN dropped the bomb on him.

It’s going to be extremely difficult for Witten to make a comeback at his age, especially after sitting out an entire year away from the constant hitting and pounding an NFL tight end has to endure. Witten knows it’s a challenge, but he’s ready to take on the challenge the same way he jumped into the broadcast booth last year. We will have to see if the comeback will be a successful one – something that was obviously not the case with his short-lived broadcasting stint.

You can read more of my work at www.hudsonreporter.com or www.theobserver.com and you can follow me on Twitter @ogsmar.

The real reason for the affection for the Rams

This weekend, the Super Bowl will be played in Atlanta. And it just happens to be that my beloved favorite football team is getting a chance to avenge the loss that they suffered to the New England Patriots back in 2002.

Over the years, I’ve been asked thousands of times how someone from Jersey City ends up rooting for the Los Angeles, then St. Louis, then back to Los Angeles Rams as a favorite team.

Just last week, sportswriter supreme Dave Caldwell, a friend and colleague for many years and someone who I admire as a brilliant hard working wordsmith in our rapidly dying chosen field of work, reminded me that not a lot of people know the real reason why I became a Rams fan as a little boy. And it’s a good story, one that deserves to be told this week as the Rams prepare to lock horns with the Hoodie Genius and Joey Cleft Chin in Atlanta.

It was the summer of 1972 that I put my horns up for good. And I had good reason to do so.

On New Year’s Eve of 1971, I lost my father, Jack Hague, to cancer. He was sick, then diagnosed with stomach cancer, operated on and died in the span of three weeks. He was 54 years old. I was 10.

Still to this day, losing my father at such an early age was the most traumatic and devastating event that happened to my family.  He was my everything. He was a friend, a coach, a teacher, a mentor. He was funny and entertaining and loving and respected by everyone.

In fact, my father was so well respected by the neighborhood that he was the long-time Democratic committeeman for my neighborhood. If someone needed a turkey on Thanksgiving, then Jack Hague received a call. If someone needed to have their sidewalk shoveled after a snowstorm, Jack Hague was called. If an elderly person needed a trip to the grocery store, they called Jack. A ride to the doctor’s appointment? If Jack was home, he was driving Miss Daisy, minus the cap.

So with his passing, the Greenville neighborhood and St. Paul’s Parish didn’t know where they would go to call. In fact, no one was tabbed to replace my father with the Democratic Party committee for almost a full year.

But someone wanted to do something to honor Jack and what he did for the neighborhood. So money was raised in order to send Jack Hague’s young son to the National Football League Players’ Association Camp that was held at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

It was an expensive gathering of about 50 of the NFL’s top players, who served as instructors and clinicians. I have no idea what the cost was, but I’m willing to guess that it was at least $2,000, probably more. It was a time where the players could really use the extra cash that came with the work at the camp. In the early 1970s, NFL players weren’t getting seven-figure contracts, so it they received $5,000 or so for the week in Easton, it was quickly gathered.

I never found out who was behind the fundraising efforts, but I have strong beliefs that the mastermind behind the efforts was my grammar school football coach Bill DeFazio. As I grew older and the relationship between Billy and I morphed into a very close friendship.

Billy had the ability to squeeze money out of a beggar on Kennedy Boulevard, so if he saw a chance to get the neighborhood together and raise some cash to pay tribute to a pillar of the parish, a devoted Little League coach and daily St. Paul’s Courtyard monitor during the hours before the first bell and during lunchtime while helping develop one of his learning and burgeoning football players, then he was going to do it.

I asked him many times before he died in November of 2010 whether he was behind the fundraising efforts to send me to the NFL Players Camp that summer and he never did admit to it. He would just smile, tilt his head to the side like he always did and shrug his shoulders like a little boy who had his hand caught in the cookie jar. Billy must have made a pact with the Devil not to spill the beans, because he never truly did. But I think he was the one who did it. And if someone knows for sure, they haven’t told me in all these years since.

So in any case, I was handed all the information to go to the camp. There was only one problem. My mother didn’t drive. She had my father’s pristine Chevrolet Impala, but no driver’s license. She eventually got her license later that year after failing the driver’s test an astounding four times. If anyone saw my mother drive, it wasn’t hard to figure out why she failed four times. She was clearly the worst driver to ever grace the roads of New Jersey. I never could understand how she was able to pass the test in the first place.

To get me to Bethlehem, my mother went with me on the No. 99S bus to Port Authority and watched as I climbed aboard a bus to Bethlehem. When I got to the bus station in Easton, there was a shuttle bus for campers going to the camp.

It was the first time I was away from home without one of my parents. Later that summer, I went on a trip to 

Lake George, N.Y. with Father George, the chaplain at St. Ann’s Home near my house. I got to know Father George from being an altar boy. He also liked my father and took me and another altar boy to Lake George for the week.

Can you imagine something like that happening now? I can also assure you that Father George Mader did not touch me or try anything with me. I think Father George was fine with the other altar boy who went on the trip with us.

I know all the signs were there. I was an impressionable 11-year-old going on a week’s vacation with a priest. I had just lost my father. So did the other altar boy, who will remain nameless here. All I can say was that I had a fantastic time on this trip. I learned how to fish in a fresh water stream, even baiting the hook with a worm, and caught a pretty reasonable sized bass that I brought home for the Polish lady who lived next door to us to clean and cook. There was nothing felonious taking place on this trip. It was fishing and baseball and laughter.

Father George died last year. I saw him a couple of times when he was teaching and coordinating campus ministry at Ramapo College and another time when he was teaching at Paramus Catholic. He was a wonderful man and I couldn’t thank him enough for taking me on that memorable vacation.

Okay, back to football camp. At first, my mother was a little reluctant to send me to this camp, but someone (probably DeFazio) told my mother it was the chance of a lifetime and that I should go. So off I went on the first journey without her. I let go of the apron strings long enough to allow the Mama’s boy to go to play football with legends.

When I first got off the bus, there were people instructing the kids to quickly break into groups separated by positions.

“OK, running backs go over there and receivers go in that line,” someone bellowed. “Linebackers over here, quarterbacks over here, linemen over here...”

Believe it or not, the first position I played when I was in organized tackle football was quarterback. I kid you not. When I was from the ages of eight through 10, I was a quarterback. The growth spurt didn’t come until way later. At age 10, I was skinny, fairly scrawny and average height. I was not gargantuan by any means.

So when the campers were heading off in different directions, I was all set to take my rightful place with my fellow brethren signal callers. Or so I thought.

“You’re a lineman, son,” the counselor who obviously had impeccable foresight said. “You go with the linemen.”

I tried to explain that I was a quarterback and I was all set to graduate from the Pee-Wees to the big boy team later that fall. I was groomed to be a quarterback. I dreamed I was going to be the next Johnny Unitas. I practiced throwing, signal calling and watching Unitas, idolizing every movement, every step the man with the flattop haircut and high top shoes made.

But those words fell on deaf ears.

“Son, you’re a lineman,” the man insisted. “Get with the linemen.”

So the really big kids set off to one dormitory and the sleek skilled kids (trust me, I was never ever sleek) went to another dorm.

“But I’m a quarterback,” I reiterated. “I’m honestly a quarterback back home.”

“Well, you’re a lineman here,” he said. “So get with the linemen.”

I’m now 90 miles away from home for the very first time in my life. I certainly can’t call my mother, because honestly, what was she going to do? I thought about calling my brother, who lived in Hackettstown, which was about 45 minutes away from Bethlehem. I knew my brother would come get me if I really needed him.

Tears were flowing like a river. Trust me, I cried an awful lot back then. I cry a lot now for someone 57 years old, but when I was 11, especially within six months or so after losing the most important human being in my lifetime, I cried all the time. Something would trigger a memory of my father and the water works would just flow.

Now, I’m facing the most emotional moment of my life since Dad’s passing and I really don’t know how to handle it. What should I do? Should I call Jackie and have him come get me? Or should I suck it up and become a lineman? I didn’t know a thing about blocking. I knew how to be Unitas, the short choppy steps dropping back to pass, the release at three-quarter arm’s length, not directly over the top, the two-minute drill. Yes, I was 10 and practicing the two-minute drill, like what plays I’d call for Tom Matte and John Mackey. I was nuts, but I was a quarterback through and through.

Until that day, when that counselor told me for the last time in a high-pitched shrill, “Son, I told you 37 times already. You are a lineman. Now hurry up and get going with the linemen.”

More tears. Half Pint on Little House of the Prairie (perhaps a little foreshadowing here?) didn’t cry as much as I did that day. Ricky Schroeder in “The Champ” had nothing on me. Tom Hanks could have said, 

“There’s no crying in football,” but I didn’t care. The emotion poured down my red cheeks and the sniffles were too ferocious to be stopped by a Kleenex.

I was so upset that I meandered over to an area away from all the activities, buses or not. I was like Eric Carmen doing “All By Myself,” but the song wasn’t released until three years later. As the sun began to set in Easton, I sat myself on a log that was used to corner off the buses. I was sure I didn’t want to be a lineman (more foreshadowing), but I thought about it over and over about what my next line of defense would be.

I knew that the people of my neighborhood pooled their money together to send me to this camp. How could I leave after a half hour? What a disappointment I would be. I couldn’t show my face to those caring people ever again.  To my football coach DeFazio, who I feared tremendously, but who I admired and respected immensely. I knew it would be a gigantic disappointment to him. If I called my brother, he would have come to get me, but it would have been a colossal embarrassment to him that I cried my way out of a football camp.

The emotions were flowing, no doubt. So I just sat on the log and cried.

At that time, I heard a booming voice that changed my life forever.

“Son, I heard you don’t want to be a lineman,” the hulking man said. “Get up, I’m going to teach you how to be a lineman.”

I had to look up at him, but couldn’t see a face because of the setting sun. The sun was so bright that I couldn’t make out the face, just the immense frame. He put out his humongous hand to help me up. I put my hand in his and got to my feet. As I stood up, I recognized the face right away. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Merlin Olsen.

Yes, it was Merlin Olsen, yes, that Merlin Olsen, arguably the best defensive tackle in the game, the upteen time All-Pro defensive lineman from the Los Angeles Rams. MERLIN OLSEN JUST PICKED ME UP FROM A LOG AND HELPED ME TO MY FEET. MERLIN OLSEN!!!!! THE GUY ON LITTLE HOUSE OF THE PRAIRIE AND THE GUY WHO BECAME FATHER MURPHY SELLING FTD FLOWERS ON TELEVISION!!! THE GUY ANNOUNCING GAMES ON NBC!!!! THAT MERLIN OLSEN!!!

Olsen then brought me over to the side and gave me some quick pointers, like the three-point stance.

“I’m going to watch you all week to make sure you learn the position,” Olsen said.

He not only taught me how to be a defensive lineman, but he also taught me the basics of being a good offensive lineman. He brought his brother, Phil, who also played for the Rams, over to work with me as well.

Every single day of the six days, Olsen took the time to personally work with me.

“I’m going to make sure you are a good lineman, James,” Olsen said.

The week was tremendous. Some of the other NFL stars in the camp included John Mendenhall of the Giants, Rich Caster of the Jets, as well as Harold Carmichael of the Philadelphia Eagles, Phil Villapiano of the Oakland Raiders, Bruce Taylor of the San Francisco 49ers, Jim Kiick of the Miami Dolphins,  Ted Hendricks of the Baltimore Colts, Pete and Charley Gogolak, who were placekicker brothers, John Mackey of the Baltimore Colts. It was a great collection of players.

The dormitory counselors were prominent college players. The guy who ran my bunk was Steve Davis, the quarterback at Oklahoma at the time. At the end of the week, Steve and I became very close. He was teaching me all the intricacies of the Wishbone offense. Because of my association with Davis, I became a Sooner fan in college football. Davis had a great career at OU, posting a 32-1 record as a starter from 1973 through 1975 and was the MVP of the 1976 Orange Bowl, capping the Sooners’ national championship that year.

Unfortunately, Davis, who became a respected broadcaster, died in a plane crash outside Notre Dame in 2013.

Steve and I were close throughout the week and then after. He asked for my address, which of course I gave to him. I’ll never forget about two weeks after the camp, my mother came around the corner to where I was playing to tell me that I received a package from UPS. So I raced home to find this huge box and it was filled with Oklahoma gear like pennants, hats, bumper stickers, an autographed football from then superstars Joe Washington and Billy Sims and the Sooners. I was hooked for life.

The same goes for my association with the Rams, all because of that fateful day in Easton in July of 1972. If Merlin Olsen didn’t extend his hand to me and teach me how to be a lineman, who knows who I would be rooting for in the NFL? Maybe the Indianapolis Colts, because of my obsession with Unitas.

But that’s not the case. I’m a Rams fan, right to the core, right down to the blue and white of Roman Gabriel days to the blue and gold days of Eric Dickerson and Jack Youngblood. Of course, Merlin wore both uniforms. Unfortunately, we lost Merlin to cancer in 2010. So he’s the reason why I root for the Rams for the last 47 years and will root Sunday when they play in the Super Bowl. I’m proud to say this is the fourth time the Rams have played in the Super Bowl since I’ve been a fan. We lost to the Steelers in 1980, beat the Tennessee Titans in 2000, lost to you know who in 2002 and now this. And as Paul Harvey used to say, “Now, you know the rest of the story. Good day.”

And one last thing: GO RAMS!!!!!

You can read the rest of my work at www.hudsonreporter.com and www.theobserver.com