Harper, Espinosa snap out of funks with towering homers

When Bryce Harper stepped to the plate in the bottom of the sixth inning tonight for his third at-bat of the game, something was noticeably missing: His batting gloves. Harper occasionally decides to hit without them, so the sight of the struggling Nationals slugger gripping the bat with his bare hands perhaps left many thinking he purposely was trying to shake things up, trying to find anything that might change his luck.

And so, of course, when Harper proceeded to crush a baseball 434 feet down the right field line, off the façade of the third deck at Nationals Park, then return to the dugout and cut his previously worn batting gloves into shreds, the narrative of his team's 2-1 victory over the Cardinals was just too easy to overlook.

If only it was true.

"Nah, it's just so people don't sell them on eBay, to tell you the truth," Harper said, ruining a good story. "I guess the baseball gods don't want me to wear the batting gloves right now. I went up and hit a homer and came back and cut 'em up, just so guys don't come out of the trash can and grab 'em and sell 'em. It's happened before, so cut 'em up now."

Whatever the reason, whether it made any difference or not, the most important fact is that Harper hit a gargantuan homer via the best swing he's put on any pitch in a long time.

"How long has it been since he hit a home run?" Dusty Baker asked. "It must've been a month."

Actually, the manager was informed, it had only been two weeks.

"Well, it seems like a month," Baker said. "I'm just hoping that gets him going."

So is everyone else who wears a Nationals uniform or roots for them.

It's been a rough time for Harper, who after winning NL Player of the Month honors in April, entered play tonight hitting a scant .173 over his last 27 games, with only three extra-base hits to his credit.

And his first two at-bats in this game didn't inspire a whole lot of confidence that anything spectacular was about to happen. Despite getting ahead in the count 3-0 against Cardinals starter Mike Leake in the first inning, Harper proceeded to take a strike, then swing at one at the knees, then swing at one up and away, trudging back to the dugout. Two innings later, he chased a first-pitch changeup from Leake and grounded out weakly to second.

Throughout this slump, Harper has insisted he's felt fine at the plate. Baker knows his young star is getting precious few pitches worth hitting, and he seems to just be missing them.

"He fouled off a couple pitches, and that's been the problem," Baker said. "When he gets his pitch, he's been fouling it back. Straight back, which shows you that he's on the ball. He's just not on the center part of the ball. Most of the time when you foul the ball back, you're underneath the ball, and there's not much difference between fouling the ball back and hitting it fair on the field. Just probably a millimeter difference between hitting a line drive and popping it up and fouling it back. So I'm hoping that that gets him going."

Harper concurred with his manager's analysis.

"I mean, you just try to square up the ball every time. And I haven't been doing that," the 23-year-old right fielder said. "When I'm getting one or two pitches a game, you foul them back, and then they throw something dirty and they get you. If I don't hit those pitches that are in the zone, then you're gonna struggle and do the things that you don't wanna do. Obviously I got a pitch I could handle tonight, and gonna do some damage with it."

Harper's 12th homer of the season tied the game. One inning later, Danny Espinosa gave the Nationals the lead for good with a towering home run of his own, also down the right field line, this one into the second deck.

For Espinosa, who has been struggling himself and entered this game sporting a .199 batting average, it was a rare moment of satisfaction, all the more so because it helped his team win.

"It's been tough, obviously," the shortstop said. "I feel like I've had some good at-bats, quality at-bats, but the barrel on the ball. But it's just the way it goes. Can't give up. I'm not going to change what I'm doing, my routine or anything like that. I've just got to keep grinding and just trust the fact that things will start going your way."

Whether things finally do start going Espinosa's way or Harper's way remains to be seen. For this one night, the only thing that mattered was this night's result.

"Just happy we came out with that W," Harper said. "Espi being able to come up and do the same thing, and we get that W, that's what we want."