Brother Harper Publicly Heeds the Prophet’s Call

Note that attending Conference is something baseball players only get to do if their teams fail to win the division and go on to the October playoffs.

Last fall, it was Jeremy Guthrie who was teaching seminary while the team he started the season with did continue on to the playoffs. (To get beaten in the NLDS again!) Guthrie pitched his only game of the season in April on his 38th birthday, had a historically bad 2/3 of an inning start, was released by the team, and retired. He wrote a personal account of the 2017 that I found worth reading: link. For my account of listening to his inning: link. Since July of this season (2018), Brother Guthrie has been president of the Texas Houston South Mission.

Harper, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, met Nelson while attending the General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City last month with his wife, Kayla. Earlier this year, Nelson challenged the youth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to give up social media for 10 days. He called on women who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to do the same last month.

@ League,
That’s really clunky. The style guide states that you can use “the Restored Church” or just “the Church” after the first mention, so – why not? So long as it’s clear that it’s Christ’s church we’re talking about, and not Mormon’s (I have to say that they got that wrong in the article (newspaper reporters are really bad at checking style guides and grammar/punctuation/spelling anymore, I’ve noticed)).

Never mind Wm. Jas. He’s pleased to be droll and is going to worry this particular specimen of humor until there’s nothing left of it but scraps and slobber.

@ G,
Fair, fair. My brother, too, is a pedant only when it suits his arcane sense of humor and purposes. It just seems like too much work to me.

I am thinking a bit about celebrities of the Harper class. He is a great baseball player, but his value in the current free agent market reflects not only his baseball skills but his ability to attract attention to his team, even from people who would have to think hard to name six current players. There are other players who have exceptional skill at winning games, but are quieter sorts and don’t have the same flamboyance with the hair and the clothes and the teen-age history and the home runs. (Home runs are a baseball skill, but a more flamboyant skill than hitting doubles at an exceptional rate.) The team which comes to terms with Harper will have fans in that city that it didn’t have before.

There’s a bit of that here. An easy case could be made that Jeremy Guthrie is closer to the ideal of a disciple, but his invitations to watch Conference and past as a missionary didn’t reach so broadly as Harper’s bits of “Mormon”-ism (so called). He was called to teach early morning seminary and to preside a mission, but not to pose for pictures with Russell Nelson. Each man gives something of value to can be used.

Just to clarify: Free agency is a term in sports contract law, not a principle of the restored Gospel.

(There is a term in the restored Gospel called “agency” but it bears no important relationship to “free agency.”)

As the saints have sung for the last couple centuries, even including it in their first hymnal:

Know this, that ev’ry soul is free
To choose his life and what he’ll be;
For this eternal truth is giv’n:
That God will force no man to heav’n.

Freedom and reason make us men;
Take these away, what are we then?
Mere animals, and just as well
The beasts may think of heav’n or hell.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=free+agency&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfree%20agency%3B%2Cc0

“The Law of Free Agency”

“But a moment’s candid reflection upon the principles of these systems, the manner in which they are conducted, the individuals employed, the apparent object held out as an inducement to cause them to act, we think, is sufficient for every candid man to draw a conclusion in his own mind whether this is the order of heaven or not. We deem it a just principle, and it is one the force of which we believe ought to be duly considered by every individual, that all men are created equal, and that all have the privilege of thinking for themselves upon all matters relative to conscience. Consequently, then, we are not disposed, had we the power, to deprive any one of exercising that free independence of mind which heaven has so graciously bestowed upon the human family as one of its choicest gifts; but we take the liberty (and this we have a right to do) of looking at this order of things a few moments, and contrasting it with the order of God8 as we find it in the sacred Scriptures. In this review, however, we shall present the points as we consider they were really designed by the great Giver to be understood, and the happy results arising from a performance of the requirements of heaven as revealed to every one who obeys them; and the consequence attending a false construction, a misrepresentation, or a forced meaning that was never designed in the mind of the Lord when He condescended to speak from the heavens to men for their salvation.”

-Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 49

That Ngram graph made me smile: likely all of the 19th Century use of “free agency” was of the sort that Joseph Smith would have pondered, and all the rise on usage since the 1977 minimum is referring to sports player contracts. But if Joseph Smith were still around, he too might be moved to wonder how much Harper will sign for.

Now the big question: If Harper signed for, say $200 million for 10 seasons, instead of $350 million, could he get Sundays off in his contract?