Bryce Harper suspended, fined for Monday night’s episode

The Washington Nationals’ Bryce Harper will be suspended for one game and fined an undisclosed amount for his abusive language towards an umpire on Monday.

According to Fox Sports’ Ken Rosenthal, Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper will be suspended for one game and fined an undisclosed amount by Major League Baseball for his actions occurring on Monday night.

Harper is by far and away the most exciting player in the game today. He’s asserted himself as the best position player in the National League, winning the 2015 MVP award in the Senior Circuit as the face of the Nationals and frankly the game of baseball.

However, it’s not acceptable to attack an umpire verbally and get away with it. The fine is an obvious punishment, but it seems that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, Jr. wants to set the tone that he will not tolerate his game’s brightest star berating an umpire.

Baseball needs more star players like Harper to usher in a new era of fans in a sport that is rapidly losing a younger fan base. Could Harper have just been subjected to a fine and that would have been alright? Yes, but it doesn’t look good for the league to have its best player throwing choice words at an official, no matter how egregious of a call it may have been in Harper and the Nationals’ eyes.

Harper is still in his early 20s and has plenty of time to continue to be the most exciting, and therefore most important player in the MLB. Sure, he can continue to challenge all the antiquated unwritten rules of the game of baseball, but having a jaw fest with an umpire isn’t the way to go about enacting change in the MLB. The suspension is perhaps a tad too much.

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