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[QUOTE="manleyzoo, post: 1773501, member: 519"]
Two quick stories...I'm assuming you mean ARod and Harper. Fernandez came up to the bigs at age 21. A good friend of mine was in the Pirates organization in the early 90s working his way up the ladder. He was a great player...as a 21 year old ran at 6.4 60, hit .347 in triple A but was behind Bond, Bonilla and Andy van Slyke and pretty much stuck. So he's invited to big league camp and runs into ARod at 18. My friend was a pretty good player, a solid lead-off guy and a plus CF, in line to make the 40-man. But he said ARod at 18 was way better than anyone on any team of the young guys by a mile. Anything anyone did ARod was just flat out better. A freak.

With Harper, he was well known among travel ball teams from when he was nine. Every year in late October there's an elite level tournament in Vegas for the best teams in the West--California, Arizona, Nevada--usually with the the top 13-14 year olds in the country. My son was an elite-level player with a California team that was stacked with maybe 10 future draft choices and D1 players. At one point in the tourney they played Harper's team...he was playing up and all of 10 years old. To say he was by far the best guy on the field would be an understatement. Even at that age, he crushed two at least 350 feet. He was a catcher as a youngster and easily threw out three or four guys, including my son, all of whom who ran sub 6.7 60s. Another freak.
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