Many were quick to label the fan an idiot after a screengrab of the misspelled sign spread on Twitter. Others surmised that the sign was a joke, perhaps a reference to Nationals Manager Dusty Baker mistakenly calling Harper ‘Royce’ during spring training or Santangelo’s long-running bit that opposing fans never boo Harper, they just call him Bruuuuce.

The real story is much simpler than that. It involves a couple of friends who hoped to score an autograph from one of their favorite players — or get mentioned by Deadspin for trying.

“We had the idea about a week ago that we were going to go to this game and we just decided to make signs,” said Ryan Winnick, a Phillies fan from New Jersey who graduated from Towson last year. “We knew people were going to think we were idiots.”

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I am going to the phillies game this saturday, and of course going to batting practice. Last time I went i got lucky and scored Kershaw’s autograph. what would be a funny sign to make him come over? Ideas: Bryce Babes ( 2 guys holding the sign) ” i traveled 4000 miles to see bruce harper!” ( purposely mispelled” thoughts?

“There literally is not an origin [to the joke],” Kyle Banas — the guy holding the sign — explained in an email. “I honestly had no idea about the whole Dusty Baker incident or people booing Bryce and it sounding like ‘Bruce.’ I just thought it would be funny to come a long way and be such a diehard fan to misspell his name.”

Banas, a Yankees fan, and Winnick scalped standing-room only tickets with two other friends and brought three signs into the game. One, which they planned to hold up during the seventh-inning stretch, read, ‘What Inning Is It?’ The third sign, which almost didn’t make it past Citizens Bank Park security, read, ‘Bryce, Make Baseball Fun Again By Signing My Balls.’

The friends stood behind the Nationals’ dugout during batting practice and, when the ticket holders in their row never showed, stayed there for the entire game. Shortly after MASN’s cameras captured Banas holding his sign, the ‘Dude, we saw you on TV’ text messages starting coming and didn’t stop.

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“I didn’t see Kyle lift his head up from his phone for the next three innings,” Winnick said. “I’d say half the people knew it was a joke and half the people didn’t.”

Banas and Winnick didn’t get autographs from Harper, but they received a mention from Deadspin, among many other sites, just as they had predicted.

Banas continued to receive text messages from friends on Sunday after”SportsCenter” did a segment about the sign. He’s enjoyed reading the tweets and comments from people calling him an idiot, but in less family-friendly terms, and even received the ‘Crying Jordan’ treatment.

“I guess when you get the ‘Crying Jordan’ face on you, it means you made it?” he said.