Smash Mouth Takes A Shot At Bryce Harper, Booing Phillies Fans
Back when Bryce Harper was a free agent in the process of choosing a new team, an unlikely voice attempted to sway the slugging outfielder’s decision — the 1990s band Smash Mouth.
Throughout February the band, best known for their hit “All Star,” used their social media channels to push for Harper to sign with their favorite team, the San Francisco Giants. At one point, Smash Mouth even implied that they had inside information about the Harper talks, at a time when information was being leaked virtually every day about the player’s negotiations with different teams.
While the Giants did have some meetings with Harper, he ultimately neglected to heed the advice of Smash Mouth and signed with the Philadelphia Phillies instead.
But after the incident this week in which Harper was booed by Phillies fans after an 0-for-4 night — per The Inquisitr — the player has gotten an “I told you so” from that Giants-supporting group.
“Yo Bryce…….told you not to go to Philly jacka**!,” Smash Mouth tweeted from their official account Thursday. “The @SFGiants fans NEVER boo their own players! You we’re lead [sic] by $ only so swim in the sea of boos now! How much do you love your agent now?? Worth the taxes you avoided? How’s that 45min drive to the stadium? lol.”
Harper, following the game in which he was booed, didn’t blame the team’s fans for their reaction.
“It’s not fun to lose, not fun to watch when you’re playing that way,” Harper said after that game, per NBC Sports Philadelphia. “(I was) 0 for 4 with two punchies. I’m probably thinking the same thing walking back to the dugout.”
Smash Mouth turns on 'jackass' Bryce Harper amid Phillies boos https://t.co/0tnDoftDnH pic.twitter.com/dkvg329tT5
— New York Post (@nypost) May 2, 2019
In terms of a fact-check of Smash Mouth’s tweet, while the Giants’ fans famously cheered Barry Bonds when everyone else in baseball booed him, it’s not quite true that supporters of the team never boo their own players. A Giants player named Johnnie LeMaster was booed so often by the team’s fans in the 1970s that he once came out for a game with “BOO” written on his jersey, per This Great Game.
It’s not exactly a tax avoidance scheme to sign to play somewhere with lower taxes than California, and while it’s not been reported where exactly Harper lives, it’s probably not 45 minutes away from Citizens Bank Park. It’s quite possible that Smash Mouth was remembering a past tour moment or two in which they got caught in traffic on I-76 or another Philadelphia-area highway.
And finally, as this Twitter user pointed out, Smash Mouth’s most famous song literally urged all-stars to “get paid.”
