After picking fireballer Stephen Strasburg out of San Diego State with the first overall pick in last week’s Major League Baseball amateur draft, the Washington Nationals have more reason not to rush him to the majors or in any other way try to win more games this season: getting the top pick in the 2010 draft.  Proclaimed baseball’s LeBron James by Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci in a June 8 cover story, high school star Bryce Harper, currently a sophomore in Las Vegas, NV, has opted to earn his GED rather than finish high school so he could enroll in junior college for next year and and expedite his draftability.  According to MLB rules, a player must be 16 and have finished high school to be eligible for the draft.

According to Verducci’s article, the 6-3 / 205 lb. lefthanded-hitting and right-throwing Harper catches and pitches.  As a pitcher, he tops 96 on the gun.   As a hitter, he slugs 500-ft. homeruns. (There are highlight videos of Harper on YouTube.)  After two years of high school, he will begin next fall at the College of Southern Nevada.

While he can be a real-life Roy Hobbs or Steve Nebraska, one must keep in mind that he still has not faced Major League, or even minor league or college competition.   In addition to an express lane to professional baseball, Harper’s decision is as much a step-up in competition.  Parents may shudder at the “loss of youth” but sports fans should rejoice because if Harper is the next Babe Ruth, we get to see him soon.  Who wants to bet he hires Scott Boras next spring?

For those of you wondering who the youngest player in MLB history was, that would be Joe Nuxhall who was two months shy of his sixteenth birthday when he pitched 2/3 of an inning for the War-depleted Reds in a War-depleted league in 1944.  He began (or resumed) his ten-year career in 1952 and went on be a long-time and much-beloved broadcaster of the Reds.