June 15, 2011: Bryce Harper’s First Professional Triple

By the middle of June 2011, Bryce Harper was a few months into a pro career that had been hyped for years. When he made his Hagerstown home debut on April 15, a sellout crowd of 6,017 came to life as he stepped to the plate, and the Washington Post called him perhaps the most highly touted hitting prospect in a generation. The start wasn’t easy: he went 0-for-3 that night with a walk and a strikeout. But it didn’t last. A few weeks in, multi-hit games were routine, and he put together a 10-game hitting streak in which he hit .486 with seven doubles and four homers. The 18-year-old was settling in, and on June 15 he added a new line to his pro resume.

This game-used baseball was part of the play when Harper hit his first professional triple on that date as a member of the Class A Hagerstown Suns. It was a rare one: in 72 games with Hagerstown, he hit .318 with 14 home runs, 17 doubles, and just one triple. Triples are about speed and hustle, and for a player who has built his career on power, they’ve never come often. Even in his 2015 MVP season, with 42 home runs, he finished with a single triple. That makes this ball a small but real piece of Harper’s story: the first triple of a career that would include two MVP awards and a place among baseball’s biggest names, hit at the very start in a small Maryland ballpark.