"Fuuuuuuck!!!" This is Bryce Harper—the erstwhile pastime’s answer to LeBron James, Mozart child prodigy of the great game. The Washington Nationals’ 19-year-old prospect is taking big cuts in an impromptu batting-cage session on the campus of UC Irvine, all for my benefit. I wanted to see the supposed perfect swing in action. I wanted to witness baseball’s next Barry Bonds. And I’m suddenly a little worried that he’s just broken his hand.

The man who had been tossing lobs to Harper is a contracted soldier of super-agent Scott Boras, whose offices are just a few miles west—and in small part paid for by the commission he received from the $9.9 million contract Harper signed at the age of 17. Indeed, though barely of voting age, Harper is primed to make more money through sponsorships than almost any ballplayer in the league, and his baseball resume already has the ring of legend: the 570-foot homer he hit in Las Vegas, where he was reared, at the age of 15; the thump a year later, at Tropicana Field, that was, at the time, the deepest recorded at the Tampa Bay Rays’ home field; the blistering speed that allowed him to score from second on wild pitches regularly in high school.

Harper’s swing is so violent that in the cage, the bat cracks even when he misses. The trainer seems not so comfortable: This is his first time underhanding batting practice to Bryce, and he keeps hearing about it from the kid. ("My dad"—Harper’s trainer since T-ball—"is better at tossing these.") He’s also crouched four feet from the end of Harper’s bat; one errant swing and the trainer’s teeth might be scattered to Newport Beach. "When I hit the ball," Harper says, "I do want to hurt it."

Now that Harper’s the one hurt, he takes a hop-step out of the box. Again: "Fuuuuuuck!!!" A violent toss of his custom-made Marucci bat—inscribed with LUKE 1:37 ("For with God nothing shall be impossible")—across the batting cage. "Fuck it, I’m done." Harper shakes his hands vigorously and shoves them into a pile of infield dirt adjacent to the cage. "I didn’t know I was hitting today, and I don’t have my goddamned gloves," he says. "It hurts like a dick."

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What makes Harper far more anticipated than your typical phenom is a sense that he not only recognizes the vastness of his potential but also feels plenty comfortable telling you about it. One minute he informs me that "baseball needs more superstars." The next, while discussing Albert Pujols signing with the Angels, he offers thoughtlessly, "Albert and I know each other and respect each other." In a sport in which "paying your dues" is practically in the job description—an institution that once made Michael Jordan ride around in a bus for five months—Harper seems to have emerged fully formed to piss off the baseball establishment.

On his way up, he didn’t shrink from his sometime moniker, the LeBron of baseball. He poured vats of eye black on his face to make himself look like a professional wrestler. In a minor league game last year, after hitting a home run, he blew a kiss to the opposing pitcher. (Harper tells me, "It was an ’eff you’ from the mouth.") That’s the sort of business that will get a major leaguer a fastball in his ear. As Hall of Fame third baseman Mike Schmidt put it: "I would think at some point the game itself, the competition on the field, is going to have to figure out a way to police this young man."