A week on the internet seems like forever ago, but you surely remember that Bryce Harper collided with a wall in Los Angeles over a week ago, resulting in bleeding and stitches. Harper absolutely remembers -- obviously -- but blames himself for his memory, saying that it caused the Nationals to lose to the Giants on Tuesday night in San Francisco.
The Nationals were up 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning, Rafael Soriano had the Giants down to their last strike, but then Andres Blanco struck on his 1-2 offering, sending the ball Harper's way:
If you didn't know any of the context behind this, you'd be hard-pressed to say, definitively, that he either slowed up or had decided to play it on a bounce, but discussing the matter is pointless, as Harper himself said that the wall was a problem for him:
Bryce Harper said to put the loss on him. Felt he should've caught Blanco's triple and admitted collision w wall entered his mind.
— Amanda Comak (@acomak) May 22, 2013
Comak later tweeted that Harper could not stop mentioning the fact he should have caught the ball, and that fear of the wall was something he was just going to have to get over. Given some time, Harper very likely will get over his collision, and fear of another one.
Remember, this just happened to him, fewer than 10 days ago -- he'll go back to the wall plenty of times before this month and this season are over, and if he doesn't plow into a scoreboard again anytime soon, he'll get back to things being the way they used to be, and be less spooked by the specter of another collision.
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