Pete Rose says Bryce Harper plays ‘recklessly,’ offers the Nats some advice

“Here’s Bryce’s problem, okay?” Rose said. “Bryce growing up, I was his dad’s favorite player. I mean, that’s a fact. And there’s a difference in playing hard and playing recklessly. And Bryce plays recklessly. And there’s a reason for that. He was a catcher when he was here [in Las Vegas].

“Now all of a sudden they’ve got him in the outfield, and he don’t understand warning tracks, and he don’t understand every [ballpark] the caroms are different, the walls are different. Some are padded, some aren’t. You can’t turn around and run into the wall at Dodger Stadium face first. So what I would tell Davey Johnson – and he knows more about his team than I do – I would play Bryce Harper as deep as he possibly could, where anything over his head goes out of the ballpark. And that way he’s not gonna run into fences until he gets used to the different ballparks.”

“He’s not gonna get hurt by playing hard,” Rose said. “Who played harder than I did? I should rephrase that; he’s GONNA get hurt, but he’s not gonna hurt where it’s gonna take him out of the lineup for a length of time. Playing 162 games during a baseball season, there’s a lot of bumps and bruises. And you can’t bitch every time you get hit on the arm or something, or you slide into the second baseman and he spikes you on the knee or something. I mean, that’s just part of the game.”