Hardly star struck, Baker says Harper's baseball knowledge is impressive

VIERA, Fla. - In the few weeks he's been around Bryce Harper on a regular basis, new Nationals manager Dusty Baker has enjoyed getting to know the reigning National League MVP. Managing stars is hardly new territory for Baker - he's skippered clubs with Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa and Joey Votto, among others - but Harper's unbridled enthusiasm for the game and his encyclopedic knowledge of its history and players have made their mark.

"He's a very knowledgeable young man," Baker said when asked this morning about his impressions of Harper. "He's more knowledgeable than anybody his age out there in that room as far as baseball players, history. A lot of guys out there don't know who this guy is, who that guy is. He's got a pretty good idea. I like that."

Having a conversation with Baker is equal parts homespun philosophy and baseball history. He's sent more than one young writer to Baseball-Reference.com to research the names he drops, and his nearly half a century in the game as a player, coach and manager has given him Baker a frame of reference that be challenging for some of his younger players to grasp.

As he's chatted up Harper, Baker has been heartened that he seems to know who he's talking about.

"It wasn't really a quiz, but I kind of like ask him, 'You remind me of him,' or, 'Do you know this this guy?' He says yes almost every time," Baker said. "There are other guys out there, I'll ask them and they don't have no clue. This guy, he wants to be the best. That's how you be the best. You put in the time and effort."

Harper is a bit of an anachronism, a guy whose hard-nosed style is more reminiscent of the days when the game was played on black-and-white televisions once a week on Saturday afternoons. He knows the game's past as well as he does the pitchers that he faces from day to day. Even the No. 34 on his back is a nod to a legend - add the three and four and you get seven, as in the number Yankees great Mickey Mantle wore on his pinstriped jersey. Harper idolizes the Hall of Famer, even though he could only have seen grainy video of Mantle, who played his last game 24 years before Harper was born.

So it's no surprise that Baker has taken a mostly hands-off approach to Harper, who has quickly earned his new manager's respect.

"I kind of leave him alone unless I see something. ... He's been wide open for what I had to say," Baker said. "At least he's acting like he is. Like I tell them all, 'At least look at me. Fool me with your eyes. You might be listening.' Or, like Hank Aaron used to tell us, 'You may not understand this routine, but someday - four or five years, or next month - you might.' "

When Baker broke into the big leagues at 19, he was befriended by Aaron, the Braves slugger who promised Baker's mother he'd keep an eye on the youngster. Because of his friendship with Aaron, Baker was exposed to many of baseball's elite players at an age when most of peers were just trying to carve out a niche in minor league dots on maps.

Baker showed respect, but tried not to be star struck. Maybe that's one reason he understands what it means to manage some of the game's biggest names.

"It helps a lot, the fact that I played with some of the greatest stars and I was kind of a star there for a while myself," he said. "I know what it entails. I know they're people. I recognize their insecurities, their confidence. You recognize different things about them. Just because they're stars, just because God put a bunch of talent in them, it doesn't make them any different than somebody else. It's just that we treat them different."

Some need a kick in the pants, others need a sympathetic ear. Baker knows all share a commonality.

"All these people are stars where they came from. ... All of these guys are the best where they came from, every one of them," Baker explains. "Some of them are lonely, some of them need love. I think they all need love; I mean, they're people."

Does Harper need anything special or need to do anything different?

"If anything, he might need to not be so hard on himself," Baker said.