Feb. 23, 2026
Four months after a few mild words of accurate public criticism, Bryce Harper is still swabbing his wounds. He added a new stop on his self-pity tour last week upon his arrival at spring training in Clearwater.
Isn’t he supposed to be the toughest player on the Phillies?
For most of his inaugural 2026 news gathering, Harper kept repeating how “wild” he thought it was that GM Dave Dombrowski questioned the $330-million slugger’s elite status last fall after a mediocre season.
“I think the big thing for me was when we first met with this organization it was, ‘Hey, we’re always going to keep things in-house, and we expect you to do the same thing,’ so when that didn’t happen, it kind of took me for a run a little bit, so I don’t know. It’s part of it, I guess. It was kind of a wild situation.”
At least now it’s clear why Harper remains flustered by the public comments. He thought it was wrong for his GM to point out that a .261 average with 27 homers and 75 RBIs was not an elite season. It’s a shame the Phillies couldn’t have embargoed his stats to sustain the fiction that he played like a superstar last year.
Harper chose a profession that is, by its very nature, public and was chagrined when an honest and obvious assessment of his performance actually became a public issue. He is 33, not 10. When did he become so sensitive, so spoiled?
Of course, this supposed vow of silence on the Phillies has also depended on the acquiescence of the media, who – with a couple of exceptions among local columnists – have been covering the team with pom-poms perched on their laptops.
The real issue here is just how soft, how prickly, even the best and boldest of superstars are to the slightest sign of public negativity. And also how the once-proud sports journalism in our city has softened into little more than PR work.
Harper should understand, 16 years into his career, that he will ultimately be judged by whether he can ever win a World Series. As much as he would like to stifle the truth, it is a matter of verifiable fact that his original team, the Washington Nationals, won a championship the season after he left for Philly. He has zero rings.
And if he would still prefer that everyone, including Dave Dombrowski, consider him an elite player again, my best advice is to play like one.
Staying with the soft theme, here’s a question none of us will ever have to consider: What can you give the billionaire who has everything?
The answer came last week when the NFL, very quietly, informed the NFL Players Association that it could not publicize the results of annual report cards for the 32 owners. Apparently, the rich guys didn’t like anything negative coming out about how they run their franchises.
Now, here in Philadelphia, Jeff Lurie has nothing to worry about, even though his poll results plummeted from fourth to 22nd in the past year. (The player complaints were about lunch lines, child care and first-class seats.)
Lurie is well-liked across the board here, and the local media would have to time-travel back to 1990 to have the courage to take on a sports giant like the Eagles owner anyway.
Still, it says a lot about the spoiled nature of these rich autocrats that they can tolerate no criticism, even when it’s warranted. Speak no evil, even if your owner is a smacked ass like Jerry Jones.
So what can you give the billionaire who has everything?
Silence.
Not a single discouraging word.
It’s like mom always said. If you have nothing good to say, shut up.
(Obviously, I ignored that advice.)
Now, finally, we know the whole story about Nick Castellanos and his ugly divorce from the Phillies. It wasn’t just because he’s a terrible outfielder, or a sucker who can never stop swinging at low-and-outside sliders, or a dissident who cast a dark cloud over the locker room.
The final act of defiance that convinced the Phillies to release Castellanos with $20 million left on his contract was a Presidente Beer that the chronic grump brought into the dugout late last season as a protest over the way manager Rob Thomson was using him – or not using him.
If you’re looking for a defense of Castellanos, you probably already know this is not the place to come. He has earned $123 million in his perplexing career, and the next sign of gratitude he shows for his amazing life will be his first.
The fact that he didn’t like playing for Rob Thomson made sense to me – the skipper is a robot – until Nick explained that it’s only because Thomson was not a successful player himself in the majors, and not because his boss consistently bungled strategic moves in the big games.
Seriously? That was the best reason Castellanos could come up with after four seasons of playoff failure by the team?
There are two lessons to learn from the awkward parting of Castellanos and the Phillies. The first is, the final straw that ended the relationship was a beer in the dugout – not the many times he didn’t hustle, the countless occasions when he seemed disinterested in playing or the maddening number of snubs he casually offered to fans and media.
And the second is how bad the media coverage of our teams are these days – how impossibly soft they are in pursuing a story that dozens of people knew about for months, with nary a word in the media coverage.
A generation ago, a player bringing a beer into the dugout during a game would have been a major headline within a few days of the incident, if not a few hours. With real journalists like Peter Pasquarelli, Jayson Stark and, yes, Bill Conlin, there is zero chance that story would have stayed secret for six months.
We have reached a point, sad to say, when our local media is more interested in getting a good seat on the boat than ever rocking it.
Newspapers are close to death now.
Sports journalism has preceded them to the graveyard.
The 76ers just ended a four-game losing streak last night in Portland, no thanks to Joel Embiid.
Easily the most fragile superstar in Philadelphia sports history, Embiid is back on the sideline with a sore shin (plus his aching knees, balky back and bruised ego.) It has reached the point with this enigma that the team no longer even bothers to explain how he got the latest injury.
Just assume if there’s a stiff breeze in the weather forecast, Embiid will come up with a new reason not to play. And please stifle your instinct to call 9-1-1. Yes, we are all witness to a theft in progress, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
What I find more than a little remarkable is the way Embiid’s latest boo-boo dovetailed with the exploits of Lindsey Vonn, the Olympic skier who chose to risk her physical well-being by trying to compete last week with a torn ACL. By now I’m sure you know her mind was willing, but her body was not. Bravo for the effort anyway.
Embiid, who has missed 24 of his team’s first 56 games despite having no major injuries, will earn $55.2 million this season whether he plays or not.
Lindsey Vonn, who will be laid up for months after five (and counting) surgeries since her two mishaps on the slopes, earned no salary for her participation in the Olympics.
In other words, pick your sports heroes carefully these days. Some are worth your respect. Some are not.