WASHINGTON, DC: Bryce Harper took off from first base as soon as Daniel Murphy made contact and lined Jeanmar Gomez’s 1-1 fastball to left field.
Harper was running so hard and fast he came out from under his helmet.
The helmet actually hit his foot as it fell behind him and he kicked it back up over his own head as he came around third base with Nationals’ third base coach Bob Henley frantically waving him around to score the winning run in the tenth inning of Friday’s series opener with the Philadelphia Phillies in Washington, D.C.
Gotta show off the flow. https://t.co/0Icx9E2dr6 #Walkoff pic.twitter.com/aBIHu6eGZA
— MLB GIFS (@MLBGIFs) April 14, 2017
Did Harper read it off the bat, or decide to go when he saw Henley waving him in?
“I think I was just going to go anyways,” Harper told reporters after the 3-2 win over the Phillies.
If Henley had put up a stop sign?
“I probably would have ran right through it and tried to score,” Harper said.
Dusty Baker thought Harper would score from the moment Murphy made contact.
“Yeah, because they’ve got to make two perfect throws,” Baker said.
“Bryce was hauling, and then he wanted to score, that was the No. 1 thing, you have to want to score.”
Harper wanted to score the winning run, of course, because he wanted to go home.
“I was just trying to score. Didn’t want to play extras,” Harper half-joked.
“It’s tough going out there trying to get into those extra innings and don’t want to do that to your bullpen or anything like that, so glad Murph got that knock and I was able to score.”
“A 4:05 game is kind of brutal for Friday night, so glad we got out of there early.”
It should probably come as no surprise that Murphy came up with the big hit.
It was his second of the game, after he’d already extended his season-long hit streak to ten games with a single in the third.
Through ten games, the 32-year-old, who posted 56 multi-hit games last season, now has six multi-hit games on the year.
“[Murphy] did a great job, had a great at bat right there against Gomez,” Harper said.
“Always nice to see a guy go up there, and you all the faith in the world in him and he gets the job done.”
“You’re never overly-impressed with Murph because you see it day in and day out,” Baker said.
“You don’t take it for granted. You realize this guy is one of the best hitters in the world. You know, that hit to left really doesn’t surprise me, because that’s his bread and butter, this is how he made his living prior to him hitting the ball out of the ballpark, from the playoffs till today.
“When a guy goes to the opposite field with authority, that’s hard to teach, and that’s something that he’s probably mastered over his lifetime probably.”
Daniel Murphy walks-off on Daniel Murphy bobblehead night!
— Washington Nationals (@Nationals) April 14, 2017
(We promise we did not rig this) pic.twitter.com/AApAnJI8UN