Bryce Harper: Philadelphia Phillies waiting for Godot to hit
By Rick Soisson
Don’t believe everything you read. Especially with Bryce Harper and the Philadelphia Phillies.
Philly.com columnist Bob Ford gets proper credit for memorably suggesting the wait for Bryce Harper and Manny Machado to sign calls to mind Samuel Beckett’s most famous play. Regarding that wait, Ford wrote late last week: “By comparison, Godot stepped out for a latte and was back before you knew it.”
Nonetheless, as memories of recent glory fade for Philadelphia Phillies fans, those fans are ready to seize on any straw of hope for signing either Harper or Machado. And one such straw appeared on Twitter late Jan. 28, when a tweet from an unverified account asserted, “Confirmed Report: Bryce Harper has agreed to multi year mega contract with Philadelphia Phillies, source says deal was wrapped up pending medicals #Vegas has taken all Bryce Harper prop bets off the board.”
I discovered this communique early Jan. 29, and immediately notified fellow Phillies fans by tweet and text. Surly and unconvinced the Fightin’s will sign either, those fans replied very concisely. The first reply, from a physician at work early, was “I saw that.” The second, from the same person moments later, was “Well…?”
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And so we waited together. In different places. I did a Google search for “bryce harper signs with phillies,” and got precisely nothing solid. I refreshed this search page several times, but nearing noon about the only thing new showing up were more tweets suggesting Harper would sign with the Phillies very soon.
SOME WERE IN CAPS!
In the meantime, another fan I’d contacted early responded just as concisely as my first correspondent. To the prop bets disappearing from Vegas boards, he wrote: “True?” I replied, “Who knows? It’s still early in LV. I haven’t seen anyone deny the prop bets disappeared.”
So, then, three of us were waiting, in three different places, and so were a whole bunch of other Phillies fans calling into one of the local sports-talk radio stations. One asserted, interestingly, Harper had to sign today as a result of a video game contract calling for that. The show’s hosts were skeptical.
Mets Fan Engages in Mockery
Then a Mets fan checked in with a text decorated with an emoji of a person deep in thought. He reported, “A guy I know saw Bryce Harper coming off of 295 onto the Walt Whitmann [sic] into Philly this morning.” Those Mets fans are very sarcastic – and can’t spell. I replied, “Isn’t he in Vegas? Shall we call him Waldo Harper?”
My search page, I now noticed, also included an interesting offer, also via Twitter, of course: “If Bryce Harper signs with the Phillies I will give everybody that retweets this 20 dollars.” At noon, he had 806 retweets. And Bryce Harper remained unsigned. Apparently.
Once again in the meantime, I read another Philly.com article about a fake Twitter account (wait, some are fakes?!?) that had been suspended because of false reports of Harper signing with the Phillies. Complaints had come from (yep) a sports-talk radio station the account user claimed to be associated with and the Phillies. However, this evil-doer was apparently still tweeting under a slightly modified account designation.
*Yawn* I rewrote my search page phrase for Harper updates to read “bryce harper news.”
Uh-oh. That prop bets rumor had been challenged. ESPN’s Ben Fawkes had posted a tweet a bit earlier on his verified Twitter account: “Just to get it out there: There are NO Bryce Harper team props at Las Vegas sportsbooks. Vegas is not allowed to offer these. So any reports of them being taken down due to his imminent signing are simply false.”
dark. Next. Scott Kingery the most improved in 2019
Then one of the two Phillies fans noted above as waiting for Godot to hit liked a tweet from another unverified account, and therefore, it showed up in my feed. It read, “Guys, my friend was just on a flight next to Bryce Harper and said he just opened up his trulia app and was put in ‘Los Angeles.’”
Or, as Mr. Beckett put it concisely:
ESTRAGON: I can’t go on like this.
VLADIMIR: That’s what you think.