Mike Trout, Bryce Harper say there's no rivalry

WASHINGTON – Bryce Harper, game face in place, offered up the verbal equivalent of running through a wall.

Mike Trout, smiling the whole way, eased into Monday's first-ever regular season meeting with baseball's other face of the next generation and smoothly handled everything thrown at him.

Of course they did. That's who these two remarkably different but forever-linked talents are.

The rest of the baseball world certainly was more breathless over the matchup of the 2012 Rookies of the Year than Los Angeles Angels outfielder Trout and his Washington Nationals counterpart Harper but, whether they like it or not, the comparisons come with their burgeoning hype and fame.

Like it …

"It's good," says Trout, the 22-year-old who leads the American League in slugging percentage after back-to-back MVP runner-up finishes. "The young talent. The young players in the league. To be part of it, it's pretty cool. It's good for the fans."

Or not …

"I could care less about opinions," says Harper, the 21-year-old with the don't-look-away game that just this month has ranged from monstrous third-deck home to a benching for not hustling. "Everybody's got one. If they like him, they like him. If they like me, they like me. If they like both of us, then they know the game. If they don't, they're crazy."

This young century's wonder boys met briefly near the batting cage nearly four hours before Monday's first of a three-game series, renewing a friendship dating from playing together with the 2011 Scottsdale Scorpions of the Arizona Fall League.

"We were terrible," Trout says of that last-place squad.

Not completely. Harper hit .333 for the Scorpions with a 1.034 OPS and his six homers were third in the league. Trout was a modest .245 hitter with homer and a ratio of five walks to 33 strikeouts that hardly indicated where he was headed.

But Trout already saw the attention that hasn't let up since Harper was the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2010, a year after Trout went No. 25.

"There was a lot of hype," Trout says. "Young guys getting drafted around the same age, same hype. It's pretty cool being compared to guys like Harper. Not just that, but Hall of Fame guys like (Mickey) Mantle, guys you grew up watching, guys I haven't seen … I was born in '91."

They're that good? Historically good?

No question, says Raul Ibanez, the 41-year-old who decided Monday's 4-2 Angels victory with a pinch-hit three-run double in the eighth inning.

"Mike Trout is possibly the best player I've ever seen," Ibanez says. "And I played with Ken Griffey Jr. in the mid-90s."

Trout had two singles in five at-bats Monday, Harper a walk in four plate appearances but both insist they don't keep track of each other's performances, at least not their statistics.

"Not at all," Harper says. "Because I know I'm a damn good player. He is, too. We're going to roll through baseball for the next 20 years hopefully and make people turn their heads. He's going to do it and hopefully I am, too. There's a lot of great young talent in this game."

They do keep in touch now and then.

"We're not texting each other stuff like keep your front side closed," Trout says. "The other day, I shot him a text that a couple of guys in the clubhouse were wondering if he got jammed on that ball he hit down the line … into the third deck."

There's no rivalry, they say.

"It's not like he's a pitcher," Trout says.

But plenty of mutual admiration.

"He can roll," Harper says of Trout. "He knows how to run the bases really well. He's exciting. Everything he does on the field is a lot of fun to watch."

And back at ya?

"He plays the game hard," Trout says. "Max effort every time … uh, except for that lack of hustle the other day."

Their pre-game meeting even touched on the usually all-out Harper's punishment last week by Nationals manager Matt Williams for not running out a ground ball.

"He respected it," Trout says. "I talked with him about it. He was comfortable with it. He knew what he did wrong."

For Trout, his first visit to Washington for baseball – he owned up to a couple of high school field trips – is part of road trip with plenty of potential for distractions.

It began with three games against Detroit and MVP nemesis Miguel Cabrera and will finish at Yankee Stadium. He was 2-for-10 in Detroit with the first four-strikeout game of his career but it's the next trip that Trout says he's really looking forward to, though with some trepidation.

He'll play his first two games (May 13-14) at Philadelphia, the team he grew up rooting for and closest to his Millville, N.J., home.

"Sometimes it gets overwhelming," Trout says of getting back near home. "You want to see people. You need to prepare for the game. But it's cool when you're in the outfield or on deck and you look up and see somebody. Pretty cool."

Like Trout and Harper's careers so far have been for baseball.

"Those are two guys who are in a different class of player than you're going to see, and you get a chance to see them on the same field," says Angels manager Mike Scioscia. "But they're both going to do what they can do to help their teams win. That's what it's about. Maybe 20 years from now a kid will say they saw Trout and Harper play in the same game."