Phillies fever is taking over the City of Philadelphia & murals of reigning MVP Bryce Harper are popping up. Check out his mural south philly.
Bryce Harper : Eyesight | Mural south | Trader joes
Harper won the National League (NL) Rookie of the Year Award in 2012 and tied for the NL lead in home runs in 2015.
He was named the NL Most Valuable Player for 2015 by unanimous decision of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America; at age 22, he became the youngest MLB baseball player to win the award.
As a free agent during the 2018–19 offseason, he signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies, the richest contract in the history of North American sports at the time, until being eclipsed shortly after by Mike Trout.
He won his second NL MVP award in 2021 with the Phillies. The next season, he helped lead the Phillies to their first postseason appearance in 11 years, and was instrumental in helping the team win its first pennant since 2009, winning the NLCS MVP in the process.
Bryce Harper Eyesight
It might not be a noticeable change – not in normal lighting, anyways – but Bryce Harper believes it could make a significant difference for him in 2019.
The Philadelphia Phillies outfielder has started wearing new photochromic contact lenses in the weeks and months leading up to Opening Day, utilizing technology that adapts to changing light and is designed to minimize the effects of bright light on the eye.
The technology has long been used in Transitions glasses, which darken when exposed to sunlight, but it’s new to contact lenses.
“It’s a little trippy, where my eyes go from blue to brown when I go outside,” Harper told USA TODAY Sports in a phone interview Wednesday. “But for me, it’s a one-of-a-kind product this offseason, being able to be one of the first (people) to use it – especially as a baseball player where my vision is huge for me.”
Harper said he’s long needed contact lenses to correct his vision and has worn them since eighth grade, but they’ve given him issues in the past. The Washington Post reported in 2011 that contacts gave Harper headaches in high school, and when he joined the Washington Nationals a few years later, a team optometrist was shocked to discover that the teenage slugger was “blind as a bat.”
Bryce Harper Mural south
Joey Dougherty, who splits his time at La Salle University studying business administration, working at Dougherty Electric, and working on his art, got the idea to paint a Harper mural Sunday night.
The 21-year-old was inspired after seeing Harper’s epic homer in the bottom of the eighth against the Padres.
He pulled up a two-year-old sketch he’d drawn on his tablet of Harper’s side profile. In the image, Harper’s wearing a Phanatic bandana.
“It kind of just sat because we weren’t that good,” said Dougherty. “It really wasn’t that relevant at the time. Obviously, Harper’s been a great player, he’s been elite for a while and has been established as one of the best baseball players, but now it definitely made sense [to paint].”
He joined thousands of Phillies fans on Broad Street when the Phillies punched their ticket to the World Series, and at that moment he knew exactly what to paint.
“I figured it just made sense, perfect time after Broad Street,” Dougherty said. “It definitely did get me out of that artist block a little bit.”
Trader joe’s
Seeing athletes on a larger-than-life scale makes it easy to forget that they’re still normal people, and just like everybody else they often participate in the most trivial aspects of life.
So when Marissa Boutilier saw Phillies superstar Bryce Harper shopping with his son at a Cherry Hill Trader Joe’s, she was a little caught off guard.
“I was looking around, and then we turned the corner, and I was like ‘oh my god, is that Bryce Harper,” Boutilier said. “It was my first time in Trader Joe’s, and I’m like ‘Am I in a different universe right now? What’s going on?”
Just days ago Harper was rounding the bases after slugging an 8th inning 2-run home run in game 5 of the NLCS that clinched the pennant for Philadelphia. Harper was the MVP of the series and has clubbed 5 home runs this postseason.
Still, arguably the best player in Major League Baseball found himself browsing the aisles of the same Trader Joe’s as the 19-year-old Gloucester Township resident.
“He was just walking around shopping with his son in the cart grabbing groceries like a normal person,” Boutilier said.
Taking advantage of the chance meeting with a Philadelphia icon in the midst of a historic postseason, Boutilier approached Harper and asked him for a picture.