From Wrigley walking to umpire trash-talking: Bryce Harper’s bizarre 30 hours

4:03 PM ET

Let’s admit it: A lot of baseball players are boring. Maybe most. Not boring to watch, mind you; the game is as exciting as ever, maybe more so. But the success of the New York Yankees in the 1990s made the game less interesting in one regard: Those Yankees made the game much more corporate. Derek Jeter became one of the greatest players of all time without ever saying anything remotely compelling.

Bryce Harper, however, is not boring. Heck, just check out what happened from Sunday afternoon through Monday night.

1. Ties major league record with six walks in a game

Here’s Harper pitch log from the game on Sunday:

Ball, ball, ball ball

Strike looking, ball, ball, ball, ball

Ball, ball, ball, ball (intentional)

Hit by pitch

Ball, ball, strike looking, ball, ball

Ball, ball, ball, ball (intentional)

Ball, ball, ball, ball (intentional)

That’s 27 pitches, 25 balls. He didn’t swing the bat once. And those first three plate appearances came against Cubs ace Jake Arrieta. The day before, Harper walked three times and hit a sacrifice fly. He also walked in his final plate appearance on Friday, so he went 13 plate appearances in a row without an official at-bat.

So Harper tied Jeff Bagwell, Hank Sauer and Jimmie Foxx with those six walks, and everyone got all buzzed up about it. Nationals pitcher Tanner Roark called it “scared” baseball. Joe Posnanski wrote that MLB has an intentional walk problem.

People want to ban intentional walks because Bryce Harper got IBBed a few times? boo hoo. Whiners.

— biscuit pants (@fifthstarter) May 9, 2016

Of course, the strategy worked — the Cubs swept …

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