How ever it turns out for Harper it will be interesting to watch. It will be interesting because we are all so informed of every occurance.
I dont think the Uptons and Hamiltons had to endure as much of the media scrutiny as Harper is enduring. There is so much more media availability now.
The Uptons and Hamiltons were mostly judged by professionals and industry folk with a few baseball junkies scouring for print media. When they had a bad day it was not twittered, texted, video'd and uploaded to utube, articled, disected, rated and discussed on a least 100 message boards and blogs.
Do I feel for him?.... NOPE. When you stand up for SI and take the picture for the article "The Chosen One" you are begging for attention. With attention comes scrutiny, and just like everything else in life, you get the good with the bad.
I think one this is for sure. The kid will get an amazing bonus come June.... even if he stinks it up this season. Some team will want the promise of what has been reported. Will he ever make it? Maybe, maybe not. He will have the same chance that every other million dollar bonus player has.
As for the Robert Stock reference. I had issues with the "next coming of Christ" refrences to Robert when he was in HS out here too. He was really hyped. I think the difference between the Stock and Harper is 1) raw physicality and 2) Stock did not seem buy into the hype....He went to school.
Right now I would say Robert is in a great place. He has 3 years of his college education in the bag and he got a nice bonus to help him live in a decent manner while he tries to achieve his dream of playing ML baseball. (Gosh, I think Robert is doing much better than most!)