The Kentucky-based Florence Freedom minor league baseball team is jumping on the Manti Te'o girlfriend hoax story, offering a bobblehead giveaway of the girlfriend _ only the boxes will be empty.
Has Bryce Harper hit a bit of a wall? Could be. Have pitchers figured him out some? Well, the statistics seem to suggest that. But the Nats are confident that, as pitchers adjust to him, he'll adjust right back because, well, this is what the best hitters do.
Thursday was (unofficially) Cover Your Eyes Day at Nationals Park. A five-star pitching matchup between Gio Gonzalez and the New York Mets' R.A. Dickey quickly disintegrated into Gonzalez's worst outing of the season and a 9-5 Washington loss.
In their opening exhibition game against the New York Mets, the Nationals got their first look under major-league conditions at 18-year-old wunderkind Bryce Harper, whom they are counting on to be one of their cornerstones in the not-too-distant future.
Ask him if there's much difference between Then and Now, in terms of what he's doing at the plate, and he looks you in the eye and says: "Not at all. Nope, nothing. Been swinging the same since I was 5 years old."
DALY: Nationals' Bryce Harper isn't type to stay down long →
