Bryce Harper has only been in Major League Baseball for five plus seasons and already he seems to have had quite a full career, with the results in today’s Washington Nationals game showcasing the mercurial star’s brilliance. Harper smashed his 150th career home run, which in and of itself is not a very significant baseball number. What is significant about this particular dinger is that Harper is only the 14th player in MLB history to hit as many long balls before his 25th birthday. As Harper turns 25 on Oct. 16, he still has time to add to the total. Of the other members in this rare club, eight of them have gone on to hit more than 500 career home runs, and this list of eight includes baseball luminaries such as Mickey Mantle, Ken Griffey Jr., Jimmie Foxx, and Frank Robinson. Additionally of those eight, three have gone on to hit more than 600 home runs (Griffey Jr., Albert Pujols, and Alex Rodriguez).
The most impressive stat for this club however is that eight of them are members of the Hall of Fame. The only players who haven’t been elected are either active or not yet eligible for induction, although that may change for Rodriguez and Jones due to Performance Enhancing Drug issues with Rodriguez and a precipitous decline for Jones but that is another issue entirely.
To make things sweeter for the Nationals slugger, his team won the game against the Marlins 3-2 to grow their lead in the National League East Division to a whopping 14 games over the second place Marlins. Hopefully for fans of baseball, even if they are not Nationals fans, Harper keeps slugging and can reach the same peaks as the other members of this exclusive club because as is oft repeated, the most exciting part of baseball is the home run.
Featured Image via Flickr/Keith Allison
