Bryce Harper Has Certainly Lived Up to the Hype of 'Chosen One' SI Cover on its 10th Anniversary

Today marks the 10-year anniversary of 16-year-old Bryce Harper gracing the cover of "Sports Illustrated" with a caption that reads "Baseball's Chosen One."

It's a play on SI anointing LeBron James as "The Chosen One" when he landed the cover as a junior in high school in 2002. I'd say they got that prediction pretty solidly correct, and then some. But has Bryce Harper lived up to every last bit of the hype?

It's a universal notion that Mike Trout, who was the AL Rookie of the Year when Harper was the NL Rookie of the Year in 2012, is the best player in baseball. They are often compared to each other, but it's Trout who's our modern day Mickey Mantle.

However, that doesn't mean Harper is a blip on the baseball radar. There's a difference between who the best player in the game is who has claim to being the face of the sport. The latter most definitely goes to Harper more so than Trout, who embraces the spotlight and is likely one of the only baseball players who gets noticed outside his home fan base when he's walking down the street.

Harper is not quite as consistently great as we thought and even hoped -- he's only kocked in 100 RBI in a season once, interestingly enough -- but his resume is awfully strong.

He put together one of the best rookie seasons as a teenager we've ever seen, slashing .270/.340/.477 with 22 home runs and 59 RBI over 139 games. In 2015, when he won NL MVP, Harper put together one of the greatest single seasons we've ever seen, slashing .330/.460/.649 with 42 home runs, 99 RBI, 118 runs scored and an OPS+ of 198.

Instead of focusing on what Harper isn't great at (defense, high average), let's embrace what Harper is: a generational power hitter.

Even though it seems like he's been around forever, Harper is still only 26 years old and has room to grow. He won't become a Gold Glove outfielder with age, but the power isn't going anywhere, especially in his new home at Citizens Bank Park.

Whether you see it now or not, Harper is on a Hall of Fame track. If you are basing the "Chosen One" phrase on his needing to be a top-five player all-time, then that's not Harper. But a future Cooperstown honoree doesn't come around all the time, and a lot of folks rightly saw that in Harper when he was just a teen.