Bryce Harper is brash and bold and he pulls no punches. He’s been a prodigy since he was thirteen, drafted first overall in 2010 and making his Major League debut in 2012, going on to win Rookie of the Year with the Washington Nationals. At 23 years old he’s already a three time All Star and he was named the NL MVP last season by unanimous decision as he slugged 42 homers at a batting average of .330. We’re talking about a genuine five-tool player, and boy does he know it. Harper’s cockiness has made him both a fan favourite… and also a target.

You see, baseball has an image problem. As America’s great pastime, it’s gradually becoming past time. It was once that baseball was the national sport of a burgeoning country but these days it has been far surpassed by American football and basketball, the NFL and NBA dominating headlines all year round while the MLB lingers way back in the distance in almost every way except for the enormous quantities of money it gathers and spends.

That’s the weird part of this situation. While baseball has never seemed less relevant to the average Joe (outside of films anyway), the business of baseball is absolutely booming. Record revenues, insane TV deals, mammoth contracts. David Price just signed a deal that’ll make him more cash over the next seven years than every single NFL player in history made in their careers – bar Peyton Manning. A salary cap limits NFL and NBA player earnings, sure, although they make plenty of that difference up in endorsements that keep them relevant in the public eye. Television deals are the kicker for the MLB, individual teams making billions of dollars on new contracts for a product that’s played most days, lasts 3-4 hours, isn’t hot for time-shifting (since live sport is key, plus each game becomes irrelevant the next day with another), carries on for 162 games a season plus playoffs and has plenty of space for advertising. Not to mention the real estate business of stadium development and the MLB’s particularly generous way of splitting revenues between the 30 teams.

Now, the NFL is more about their own brand and bottom line than most sporting league bodies but the NBA is about to see the benefit of modern TV money next season when a new deal rips into being, which is expected to mean record hikes in the salary cap. Players are already structuring contracts around it (though not as many as you’d think – short term stability is huge).

So that gap’s gonna close in the future, maybe, which is hardly a problem. There’s enough money to go around. What there isn’t enough to share is publicity. Everyone knows who Steph Curry and LeBron James are, who Cam Newton and Tom Brady are. But who is gonna recognise Mike Trout if you walk past him on the street?

That’s the problem. However it’s not the cause. The cause is that the game has let the other major American sports pass it by with the times, in fact it’s been done so completely that baseball full-on idolises the antiquated rules and customs that has kept it so stagnant.

That’s what Bryce Harper wants to change, and fair bloody play to him. In a recent profile on ESPN he had some choice words for the Old School Battlers:

‘"Baseball's tired," he says. "It's a tired sport, because you can't express yourself. You can't do what people in other sports do. I'm not saying baseball is, you know, boring or anything like that, but it's the excitement of the young guys who are coming into the game now who have flair.”’

Makes sense, right? Guys like Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are household names and great ambassadors for their sport because they have personality. Messi is a chunk humbler than CR7 but the things he does to humiliate defenders and goalkeepers is every bit as ruthless. Steph Curry has taken that to an art form with the way he plays basketball. Except that in baseball there’s this unwritten code of conduct that everyone has to act like a journeyman battler at the mound/plate. Slug a homer and spend a little too long watching it go and you’d better wear an arm guard next time up because some relief pitcher is gonna slug you right in the back in the guise of team retribution.

‘"Jose Fernandez is a great example. Jose Fernandez will strike you out and stare you down into the dugout and pump his fist. And if you hit a homer and pimp it? He doesn't care. Because you got him. That's part of the game. It's not the old feeling -- hoorah ... if you pimp a homer, I'm going to hit you right in the teeth. No. If a guy pimps a homer for a game-winning shot ... I mean -- sorry."

He stops, looks around. The hell with it, he's all in.

"If a guy pumps his fist at me on the mound, I'm going to go, 'Yeah, you got me. Good for you. Hopefully I get you next time.' That's what makes the game fun. You want kids to play the game, right? What are kids playing these days? Football, basketball. Look at those players -- Steph Curry, LeBron James. It's exciting to see those players in those sports. Cam Newton -- I love the way Cam goes about it. He smiles, he laughs. It's that flair. The dramatic."’

That’s something that Bryce Harper has real experience with. In a series last year with the Baltimore Orioles, Harper’s teammate Jonathan Papelbon (definitely a flag bearer for the old school mentality – if he’s not scratching his nuts it’s because he’s either eating or pitching) blitzed a pitch past Manny Machado’s head two innings after the Orioles 3B mashed a home run that put Baltimore in front. Two balls later Papelbon drilled him in the shoulder. Machado called it “coward stuff” while Paps got a three game suspension. Harper happened to not care for that chain of events all that much himself, as one side feels more hard done by they tend to react.

Bryce Harper: “I mean, Manny freaking hit a homer. Walked it off and somebody drilled him. I mean, it’s pretty tired. It’s one of those situations where it happens and, I don’t know, I’ll probably get drilled tomorrow.”

He did not. Yet a few games later Harper popped up a fly ball and, frustrated with himself, didn’t run it out to first like he would usually. Papelbon took exception with that and confronted him in the dugout, a clash that ended with Pap’s hand on Harper’s throat. As far as unwritten rules go, playing hard to the last second is up there. But so is the general concept of not strangling your teammates.

As it happened, that was in the midst of a shocking season collapse that cost the Nationals a place in the playoffs, so there were other things going on in there. Still, unsurprisingly we then got reports of anonymous players praising Papelbon for trying to put the uppity Harper in his place. It’s such a tired line of thinking, to borrow a phrase. Even now the same thing is happening.

It isn’t just Harper either. This isn’t a one-man crusade. Possibly the moment of the playoffs last season, aside from the Royals’ winning moment perhaps, was Jose Bautista’s bat flip after busting a monster home run for the Toronto Blue Jays. Maybe one of the coolest things witnessed on any sports field all year, yet Hall of Famer Goose Gossage was just as quickly out there calling him a “disgrace to the game”.

Bryce Harper, meanwhile, says the moment gave him chills.

This isn’t an argument about old vs new. The history of baseball is what gives it its resonance, few sports at all can compete with that. What Harper is on about is personality, it’s expression, it’s flair. You should be able to celebrate and engage the fans when you do something great. Hell, if a sucker left a fastball over the plate and you give it what it deserves, you win. That’s your victory and he doesn’t get to hurl one at your chin next time up because he made a mistake. That’s straight up bullying, intimidation tactics. Harper’s so-called arrogance grinds a lot of people but, dammit, he really is that good. At the point where you back it all up, it’s not all that arrogant. Plus if opponents don’t like him, well then that’s good for the game too. Anything to get some freakin’ emotion stirring.

Most other sports have moved past this. Football, for example. That kind of thing is now mostly only seen in lower leagues, where a flashy winger might get snapped in half by a lumpy fullback for being ‘too cocky’. It helps that football is a more expressive sport and so that was a natural evolution. Still, you can point to clear milestones, such as the Hungarian team of the early 50s, the Brazilians in 1970 and even the more recent Spanish team of 2010 World Cup glory. Pele, Diego Maradona, Ronaldo, Zinedine Zidane. Teams and players that gave kids something to copy in the backyard, Leonidas popularised the bicycle kick back in the 1930s. That’s what inspires the next generation of players, it’s not the hard-tackling battlers of the 1960s but the George Bests that emerge from that scene as a beacon of light and optimism.

Or take cricket, baseball’s ancestral cousin. There’s this fallacy in the sport that there are specific ways to bat. Take your time and leave the ball often. Play yourself in first. Slow and steady. But it’s all rubbish. Look, if those styles work for you then good-o, keep at it. Just know that the only reason that’s the norm is because of guys like Geoffrey Boycott in the 70s. WG Grace used to go out there in the late 1800s and smash centuries before lunch. Hitting sixes isn’t against the spirit. With limited overs games these falsehoods have been shattered by aggressive batsmen bringing back the freedom that the game once encouraged before the customs became set in stone. Hey, Brendon McCullum isn’t arguing. He was all about playing your natural game, being positive and honest to that. Also, he was a huge advocate of sportsmanship and leaving it all on the field.

Which brings us to the problem with the Harper Solution. It’s cool to celebrate your wins. It’s not cool to shove your opponent’s face in that. But there is a middle ground in there and it ought to be embraced. And if someone should take it too far? So what, just bean him next time he comes up – these buggers are doing it anyway.